Providence selling $200 million Hulu shares

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One of Hulu's first investors, Providence, decided to sell its stake in the streaming media company for $200 million, which is twice as much they invested in Hulu back in 2007. That investment gave them a 10% stake and an independent position on the company board. They decided to move from the company back in April and earned themselves a decent amount of money. With Providence moving out the only investors left are NBC Universal, Disney and Fox. This move could have a huge impact on Hulu's future, as Providence made some big moves in their past like bringing Disney in as a new investor.

This move also means that CEO Jason Kilar could cash out and he could walk away with $100 million. He was never in a good relationship with all the members of the board and this amount of money could easily make him think twice about staying at the company. There were some rumors that back in August that the Hulu board was in talks with Kilar about his plans for the company, but nothing has happened so far. This could be the main reason for him to decide to leave the company and give some other project a go.

Because all of this, Hulu’s future is pretty grim. Their main disadvantage is that their investors (NBC, Fox and Disney) are limited to licensing their content to only one distributor. And unlike Netflix or Amazon Prime Video who licenses content to multiple distributors, Hulu makes much less money. So far no official announcements have been made about the Hulu's future, but there are many speculations on it. These rumors range from three major broadcast companies may leave the project like Providence or the CEO leaving, to bringing new investors. It is a 5 year old start up, and it had $420 million in revenue last year, but they will have to improve that a lot if they want to compete with the big guys.

[Ed – many Hulu subscribers are disappointed with their product offering. Most of these complaints stem from the fact that even the paid subscriptions are still riddled with ads unlike Netflix where you pay a rather small fee and have no ads in any of the movies and TV shows you watch. If Hulu could improve one thing it would be that massive annoyance. People do not want to pay a monthly fee to be bombarded with ads. If they wanted that they would just watch standard TV which they are already paying for…]

What do you think about Hulu and their future?

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