After a long warm-up, Disney is indeed buying a one-third stake in Major League Baseball Advanced Media’s video unit, Bloomberg’s Scott Soshnick reports. The deal reportedly values the firm, BAM Tech, at $3.5 billion, and gives Disney the right to buy another third of the company later — similar terms as Recode reported last month.
As Peter Kafka explained then:
BAM Tech is MLBAM boss Bob Bowman’s attempt to extract value for the video infrastructure business he has built up over the past few years. The company started by powering streaming services for baseball’s 30 teams, but has since started handling clients that range from Disney’s ESPN to Time Warner’s HBO. Disney would presumably be interested in owning the company so it could build out its own direct-to-consumer streaming services.
Reps for MLB and ESPN didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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