Peter Thiel Is Said to Bankroll Hulk Hogan’s Suit Against Gawker

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Hulk Hogan had a secret financial backer in his legal fight against Gawker Media for invasion of privacy.

Peter Thiel, a billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist, helped fund the case brought by the wrestler, Terry Gene Bollea, better known as Hulk Hogan, against Gawker, said a person briefed on the arrangement who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Mr. Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and one of the earliest investors in Facebook, privately agreed to help pay the expenses of Mr. Bollea’s legal team, this person said.

A self-described libertarian, Mr. Thiel has a long history with Gawker, which published an article in 2007 outing him as gay. Mr. Thiel, who is now open about his sexual orientation, once described the Gawker-owned site Valleywag as “the Silicon Valley equivalent of Al Qaeda.”

The details of Mr. Thiel’s arrangement to support Mr. Bollea’s case are protected by a confidentiality agreement and could not be learned.

A Florida jury awarded Mr. Bollea $140 million in March over a sex tape Gawker published in 2012.

The revelation of Mr. Thiel’s involvement in Mr. Bollea’s case, which has captured headlines this year for its salacious disclosures, came a day after Nick Denton, Gawker’s founder, was quoted in The New York Times as saying that he believed that Mr. Bollea’s case was being supported by a mysterious third party.

“My own personal hunch is that it’s linked to Silicon Valley,” Mr. Denton said.

Mr. Denton called on Mr. Bollea’s legal team, which refused to comment on the possibility of an outside funder, to disclose the backer.

Mr. Thiel’s identity was first reported late Tuesday by Forbes magazine.

There is nothing illegal about funding such legal cases; there is an entire industry known as litigation finance that often helps invest in and financially support lawyers working on contingency in small and large cases. It is not common for a lawsuit to be backed by a third party that may have other motives.

Questions about the independence of Mr. Bollea, who never mentioned a third-party backer, first emerged when his lawyer removed a claim from his complaint that had the effect of eliminating Gawker’s insurance company from the case. That struck many legal observers as odd, given that most lawyers seeking large payouts want to include claims that are insured against because doing so increases the chances of a settlement.

[timosman]

http://www.wsj.com/article_email/gaw...MjI2NjgyMjY4Wj

May 26, 2016

Gawker Media has hired an investment banker to explore strategic options including a potential sale, according to a person familiar with the matter, as the digital media company fights a costly legal battle with professional wrestler Hulk Hogan.

The digital publisher has hired banker Mark Patricof of Houlihan Lokey as it reviews its options, Gawker confirmed Thursday.



_{Gawker founder Nick Denton walks out of the courthouse in March after Hulk Hogan was awarded damages in his lawsuit against the gossip website. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS}


Terry Bollea, known in the wrestling world as Hulk Hogan, sued Gawker for violating his privacy by posting a clip of Mr. Bollea having sex with the ex-wife of a former friend.

In March, a jury awarded the wrestler $140 million in damages. Gawker is appealing the ruling.

Late Wednesday, Silicon Valley billionaire and investor Peter Thiel acknowledged that he has been providing financing for Mr. Bollea’s legal fight and other such battles involving people who Mr. Thiel feels have been targeted unfairly by the media company.

A Gawker spokesman said the company expects to prevail on appeal and that it is always exploring contingency plans. Earlier this year, Columbus Nova Technology Partners took an undisclosed minority stake in the media company as it shored up its books for the trial.

“We’ve had bankers engaged for quite some time given the need for contingency planning around Facebook board member Peter Thiel’s revenge campaign—that’s how the Columbus Nova investment was arranged,” Gawker said in prepared remarks. “We recently engaged Mark Patricof to advise us and that seems to have stirred up some excitement, when the fact is that nothing is new.”

The New York Post earlier reported that Gawker has begun soliciting bids for a sale.

Founded in 2002, Gawker Media owns sites like Deadspin, Jezebel and Gizmodo in addition to its namesake title, which last year it retooled to focus more on political news.

At trial, the Florida jury was told that the company was valued at $83 million and that Gawker Media CEO Nick Denton was personally worth $121 million. Last year, the company generated $48.7 million in revenue, the jury was told. According to an earlier financial disclosure, the company turned an operating profit of $6.5 million on revenue of $44.3 million in 2014.

Gawker’s edgy, aggressive style of reporting has been a source of media fascination—and ire—for more than a decade. The company has made plenty of enemies along the way, such as Mr. Thiel, who Gawker’s defunct Valleywag blog outed as gay in 2007.

Last summer the company attracted scrutiny for a story about a little-known executive’s attempt to hire a gay escort. Amid the media backlash, Gawker’s management deleted the post, which led to the resignation of two top editors.

In a statement on Wednesday, Mr. Denton said the company routinely drives big news stories, like domestic abuse committed by NFL players and Bill Cosby’s sexual assault scandal.

The company has also been a digital media pioneer in some respects: a movement by its editorial staff to unionize, for example, sparked similar efforts at other digital newsrooms like the Huffington Post and Vice.

[timosman]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/...135m/88873898/

August 16, 2016

Gawker Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June and put its assets up for sale, unable to continue business after a jury ordered the company to pay about $140 million to Hulk Hogan following an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit brought by the former pro wrestler.

Terry Bollea, a.k.a. Hulk Hogan, sued Gawker after the site posted a video in 2012 of him having sex with his former best friend's wife. Bollea (Hogan) was listed as Gawker's biggest creditor in its bankruptcy filing.

After Gawker Media sought bankruptcy protection, Ziff Davis, the digital publisher of AskMen, PCMag and Computer Shopper, immediately placed a bid for its assets — with about $100 million as the opening price — before the auction was underway. Ziff Davis sought to buy Gawker's blogs, but not assume its liabilities, if no other offer had emerged.

Univision subsequently jumped into the fray with its own bid. Univision is increasingly amassing online publishing sites to broaden and diversify its audiences, particularly going after Millennials.

Earlier this year, Univision bought from the Walt Disney Co. a stake in Fusion that it didn’t already own. Its newly created Fusion Media group now operates humor site The Onion, African-American news site The Root, and Flama, a news-and-entertainment site for young Hispanic Americans.

Denton, the British journalist and entrepreneur who founded Gawker in 2002 and was its principal shareholder, also filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this month, fearing that Hogan would be able to start seizing Denton’s assets.

Hogan's lawsuit has stirred heated discussions among media critics and on social media after it was revealed that Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire and co-founder of PayPal, funded Hogan's legal costs. In 2007, Valleywag, a Gawker Media blog, posted a story about Thiel — “Peter Thiel is totally gay, people.”

First Amendment advocates say third-party-funded lawsuits pose threats for news organizations and undermine aggressive reporting.

Denton has said Thiel's campaign amounts to "a personal vendetta" and that “it’s disturbing to live in a world in which a billionaire can bully journalists because he didn’t like the coverage."

In an editorial published in The New York Times Monday, Thiel defended his actions and said the site “routinely published thinly sourced, nasty articles that attacked and mocked people.”