sheepdog

April 20th, 2012 at 11:26 AM ^

In the tech industry, how a company is valued and what is actually on the books can be pretty different.  The intangible assets play a major role in sale prices and investors are often really just taking chances.  Example?  Myspace...

JHendo

April 20th, 2012 at 11:43 AM ^

With Instagram, it was also known that Twitter and Facebook both were interested in the company and all while at the same time a few investment firms were trying to get a piece of the action.

I'd be very surprised if that Bleacher Report is getting 1/5 of the attention Instagram was getting, because it certainly doesn't have a 1/5 of their potential.

bronxblue

April 20th, 2012 at 2:06 PM ^

It's coming and going - some people love it, but the buzz probably had more to do with a vocal minority that loved it versus a widespread adoption.  I have an account and have played around with it a bit - it's cool for what it is, but if you are not a designer or collector-type, it has limited appeal.

ChiBlueBoy

April 20th, 2012 at 11:24 AM ^

...multiplied by a fraction based on risk.

Generally, take an estimate of a number of years' profits (depending on the industry), including a number of sometimes questionable assumptions about advantages post-sale, and discount for risk. Other sales in the market can also be relevant, and the fact that others are arguably over-paying for internet entities might push the value up some.

JHendo

April 20th, 2012 at 12:22 PM ^

It kinda does seem crazy to me.  Highest potential ad revenue is probably more realistic to average out to more in the realm of fractions of a cent for each user.  Also, unique users can be misleading.  You are a unique visitor if you accidently go to the site for a fraction of second before browsing away, and you're also a unique vistor if you're a search engine spider from a new IP crawling the site for the first time.  And, if my work's IP is dynamic for whatever reason, just at work, I'm unique multiple times a month even if I'm a regular to the site.

I'd like to know how many of those visitors result in the multiple page hits and return visits and then we can put a valuation on those visitors without it sounding crazy.

Hannibal.

April 20th, 2012 at 11:30 AM ^

Winner's curse

Most of the time a company gets bought, the buyer overpays badly.

In order to justify a purchase price of that size, you'd probably need pre-tax profits on the order of at least $50MM per year.  I'm guessing they don't make that much. 

bluewings

April 20th, 2012 at 11:25 AM ^

Sounds like a lot to me but I am not a venture capitalist or know the value of these things.  I mean when I heard facebook bought instragram for $1 billion dollars I thought I heard wrong.  Everybody here knows of bleacher report and I'm sure they have a lot of traffic.  Whatever the price it is, it has to be milllions. 

LSAClassOf2000

April 20th, 2012 at 11:38 AM ^

...is quite the price to pay for a pile of guano, but then I figure that if SportsByBrooks tenders an offer, then they can at least be reunited with the shovel. That being said, to become as pervasive in digital sports media as it has, there must be savvy people behind it.

It is hard to believe that BR is the number #4 sports media site in the nation, but the scary thing is that this fact alone might induce someone to pay about $200 million for it. That is a ton of ad revenue to pass up if you want to make serious inroads into digital sports media.

Daniel

April 20th, 2012 at 11:34 AM ^

With Bleacher Report reportedly valued at over $200, we thought it would be worth detailing some reasons why we think we're one of the awesomest sites on the internet. Featured BleacherReport contributor SlightlyMoreLucidThananESPN.comCommenter has hastily thrown together a slideshow with only tangentially related pictures, drawing comparisons to a boring, innacurate, sports-centric Cracked.com article.

                                 Click here for reason #1!

 

 

                                  Or click here for scantily clad pictures of your favorite athlete's hot wives, girlfriends, and mistresses!

Mr. Rager

April 20th, 2012 at 11:34 AM ^

Well instagram just sold for $1 billion so.... 

Facebook is being valued at half of Google, even though it has 10% of the revenues / profits... 

Shit is getting out of hand again in tech...

D-Rob4Prez

April 20th, 2012 at 12:05 PM ^

$200 million would imply:



Earnings next year: $7.9 million

Book value: $100 million

This years cash flow: $14.9 million

This years revenue: $166 million



If it was compared to publicly traded, small cap companies based in the US. Of course that's the average and averages usually don't exist in the real world but it puts it into perspective. I wouldn't be too surprised considering the 18-34 male demographic is pretty appealing to advertisers.

Hannibal.

April 20th, 2012 at 12:05 PM ^

Prediction:  if it gets bought out, in three years the site won't exist anymore, and when you type the address into your browser, you'll get redirected to the home page for Fox Sports or ESPN.

NateVolk

April 20th, 2012 at 1:47 PM ^

Sort of like what Facebook does with information and people's lives, Bleacher Report is one stop shopping for mainstream fans who don't have time or patience to surf all over tracking down MSM content. It organizes the chaos of online information.

They have done a super job of taking wide ranging content from a lot of different sources and creating a user friendly format.  There are some pretty average or poor articles created by contributors, but those are intermixed with actual newspaper articles from a bunch of different MSM sources.  Plus those contributor articles are widely read and often generate a lot of comments.

I subscribe because it is a quicker way to review recent Michigan articles (or any other major college team) produced by MSM. It comes right to my inbox. When I see a contributor article I either skip it or go through the slideshow for the pictures. The whole set-up saves me time.

The reality is that it is MgBlog only way lower quality, but definitely wider mainstream semi-serious fan appeal. Like I've said many times, there's way more of those level fans, than the more intense better informed fans you'd find on a blog like this.

Tater

April 20th, 2012 at 2:39 PM ^

It's a PR6 blog, which is a very good ranking.  Also, while my research is sketchy,one site estimated that its number of daily number of visits is 1,476,510.  Clicks are money, and a visit to flippa.com will show that a lot of people are willing to pay a lot of money for sites with traffic.

This number doesn't surprise me.  BR allows anyone to be a "blogger" for an "authority site."  Its appeal to the ego is similar to that of kereoke.  Kereoke sucks, but it decreased the number of jobs for real musicians by more than 70 percent in most areas.  

Bleacher report might suck in a lot of ways, but that doesn't mean it won't make a lot of money for someone.

  

Daniel

April 20th, 2012 at 3:00 PM ^

Also, according to wikipedia, karaoke is a portmanteau of two characters meaning "empty" and "orchestra." So the fact that it has cleared out local bands makes sense with its etymological origins.