Univision Will Buy Gawker Media For $135M

The Spanish-language broadcaster Univision has won an auction to buy Gawker Media, the network of gossip blogs that lost a $140 million jury verdict in a lawsuit over a sex tape it published of the wrestler Hulk Hogan.

Univision was bidding against the internet company Ziff Davis in a bankruptcy auction. The sale still must be approved by a bankruptcy judge. It will include all of Gawker Media's websites, which include Jezebel, Gizmodo and Deadspin, according to multiple news outlets, including CNN, which spoke to Gawker's founder, Nick Denton.

Once the sale is approved, the money for the purchase will be set aside as Gawker Media's case is appealed in the courts. The purchase price for Gawker Media will be paid to whomever ultimately wins the case, according to Recode.

"Gawker Media Group has agreed this evening to sell our business and popular brands to Univision, one of America's largest media companies that is rapidly assembling the leading digital media group for millennial and multicultural audiences," Denton told CNN.

"I am pleased that our employees are protected and will continue their work under new ownership — disentangled from the legal campaign against the company. We could not have picked an acquirer more devoted to vibrant journalism."

Denton said in June he believed Gawker was worth $276 million.

Univision has recently purchased several millennial-geared media properties such as Fusion and The Root. It also recently purchased a large stake in the news satire site The Onion.

According to the New York Times, Ziff Davis CEO Vivek Shah told employees that "we decided to withdraw once we felt the price and terms exceeded our threshold."

Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, sued Gawker Media after it posted a video of him having sex with shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge’s then-wife Heather Cole. The footage also showed Bollea using a racial slur.

Bollea said the video was an invasion of privacy, while Gawker and its attorneys argued that the tape would be of public interest, given Hulk Hogan's public persona.

The lawsuit was bankrolled by Silicon Valley billionaire investor Peter Thiel, who was outed by one of Gawker's websites as a gay man in 2007.

Image: Nick Denton, left, via Financial Times, Flickr, used under Creative Commons