Satirical news site The Onion has managed to snag top dollar when it agreed to sell a hearty hunk of itself to Spanish broadcaster Univision Communications.
The site, best known for its ridiculous headlines like ‘Print Dead at 1803’ and ‘New Department Of Interior Program To Reduce Deer Population By Providing Free Condoms To Fawns’, has scored US$200 million, around AU$291 million, for a 40 per cent stake in the Onion’s parent company.
This then values the enterprise on a whole in the range of US$500 million. Think about that for a minute.
According to Fairfax, this cool price tag is double what Jeff Bezos paid for actual news site the Washington Post in 2013.
And the Financial Times? Sold for about US$1.3 billion last year to Japanese publisher Nikkei. Let’s not even talk about poor old The Boston Globe (good try selling for US$70 million, good try).
But let’s put this into perspective. The Onion’s collection of sites draw in more than 25 million monthly unique users each month. The Financial Times has around 740,000 subscribers in print and online.
The Washington Post hadn’t even started a digital subscription model at the time of Bezos’ purchase, but weekday circulation stood under 500,000.
Maybe it’s not such a ludicrous deal after all. At any rate, here’s some absolute gems of headlines The Onion has gifted to us of late:
- NCAA Investigating God For Giving Gifts To Athletes
- New Robot Warns When Someone’s About To Walk In On You Masturbating
- Average Male 4000 Per Cent Less Effective In Fights Than They Imagine
- Poll Finds Hillary Clinton Candidate Most Americans Want To Have 8-Ounce Glass Of Tap Water With
Those headlines alone are worth $200 mil.
