How Comcast became the biggest winner in Hulu’s failed sale

[Commentary] Hulu’s future seems as murky as ever after the news that the site won’t be sold after all, and it almost looks like there are losers everywhere: Hulu’s co-owners didn’t get the money they wanted for the service, Hulu’s employees and executives are still stuck with a set of co-owners that may have different ideas for its future, and Hulu’s users most certainly can expect more content to go behind the paywall. But there’s one exception: Comcast.

The pay TV operator owns one third of Hulu, but it’s not allowed to influence its business, thanks to regulatory conditions put in place when Comcast merged with NBC Universal. These conditions also prevented Comcast from having any say on the aborted sale, but I’d bet that the folks over at Comcast are pretty happy with today’s outcome. That’s because the top three contenders for Hulu included two of Comcast’s biggest rivals: AT&T and DirecTV. Cable companies like Comcast have seen many of their TV service customers flee to satellite and phone company rivals, and are now starting to feel the threat of cord cutters as well. The common narrative around AT&T’s and DirecTV’s bids for Hulu, which are said to have been around $1 billion, is that the companies were looking to use the site to power their TV Everywhere services, allowing their subscribers even easier access to complimentary catch-up programming online.