Corroborating a recent report of the Verizon Media Group looking to sell one of its most popular assets, the news site HuffPost, the media firm has now announced a sale of HuffPost to the popular media company BuzzFeed. BuzzFeed is acquiring the news site as part of a broader partnership with Verizon Media for content syndication, commerce, and advertisement sales.

BuzzFeed is acquiring HuffPost in an all-stock deal that’ll see the site’s owner Verizon Media become a minority shareholder in BuzzFeed. HuffPost now marks as the media company’s fourth major brand, the other three being BuzzFeed itself, BuzzFeed News, and Tasty.

Verizon is parting with a media property that it got from its acquisition of AOL in 2015. HuffPost was first acquired by AOL for $315 million in 2011 before transferring to Verizon after AOL’s $4.4 billion sale to the telecoms giant in 2015.

Following Verizon’s acquisition of AOL, the telecoms giant re-organized several of its media properties under the Verizon Media Group, which includes other popular properties such as TechCrunch, Autoblog, and Engadget.

As we previously reported, HuffPost is said to have spurred significant losses over the years and more so in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic that in its early months generally affected advertising revenues for media outlets. HuffPost reportedly brings in between $45 million to $50 million a year in revenue while racking up annual expenses of between $60 million and $70 million.

Amid recent struggles for digital media companies, consolidation shouldn’t be surprising in the industry even for a major brand like HuffPost.

With HuffPost, BuzzFeed is getting a popular media property with about 200 employees including a unionized editorial staff. 

Photo: BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti by Hubert Burda Media is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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