All Things D’s Peter Kafka reports Time-Warner’s Turner division is ready to pay more than $200 million to purchase Bleacher Report, the move coming on the heels of the former claiming they’d be establishing their own “branded digital destination.”
The logic for the deal is that Turner has a small presence in online sports — it manages sites like PGA.com and NBA.com, but doesn’t own them — and Bleacher Report’s nine-million-plus visitors will help fix that.
But it’s worth nothing that, up until this spring, Turner used to have a much bigger presence in online sports, via an arranged marriage that didn’t seem to make either participant very happy: For the last couple years, Turner managed Sports Illustrated’s Web site on behalf of Time Warner’s Time Inc.