During its run, Disney has acquired its fair share of companies. From Marvel and Lucasfilm to 20th Century Fox and Hulu. The Walt Disney Company is known for these acquisitions—particularly during Disney CEO Bob Iger’s previous ride at the helm—but it’s recently come to be known that there was one acquisition that Disney was angling for that didn’t pan out. Except in this case, it was the company that refused to be bought that seems to have suffered for it.
Recently, the entertainment company Buzzfeed announced that it would be shutting down its entire news division and would be laying off 15% of its staff (180 employees). The founder Jonah Peretti made a statement about it when this was announced.
“I made the decision to overinvest in BuzzFeed News because I love their work and mission so much. This made me slow to accept that the big platforms wouldn’t provide the distribution or financial support required to support premium, free journalism purpose-built for social media,” Peretti wrote.
But the truth is, Disney once almost bought Buzzfeed, and it makes us wonder whether the fate of the once shining entertainment company would have been different if the deal went through back then. As Fortune reported, “A decade ago, BuzzFeed president Jon Steinberg reportedly got on his knees to beg its founder, Jonah Peretti, to accept a $650 million buyout deal from Disney,” and Peretti refused.
Here’s the story. Former editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed News, Ben Smith, shared some insight into how this happened in his upcoming book, Traffic, which was excerpted in Vanity Fair.
Disney was trying to break into the entertainment landscape and was looking to buy Buzzfeed. Iger was willing to offer $450 million dollars for the company with an additional $200 million on the table. Smith shared it was an offer “Peretti couldn’t refuse.” Months later, in November, the deal was set, and Peretti was invited to give a speech at a moviemaker’s management retreat in front of 250 members of staff.
Smith continues that “Iger had staged Peretti’s speech in a marquee slot to welcome him to the family,” and the internet entrepreneur “delivered one of his standard, edgy monologues.” Except the speech didn’t go down very well. It was reportedly recycled and an HR executive for Disney observed that comments about Mormons and Jews made him a “problem.”
After the failed speech, Peretti came off stage and turned down the deal, and Disney CEO Bob Iger purportedly told a fellow executive at the time, “F–k him, he loses. That company will never be worth what it would have been worth with us.”
It certainly is a sad turn of events for a company that was once a rising star. While BuzzFeed’s gross revenue in 2022 was around $436 million, with a net income loss of around $201 million, Disney nearly doubled its gross revenue in the 10 years since the BuzzFeed deal went cold.
You can read the full story here.
