Tyler Perry might’ve given up his fight to own BET, but Byron Allen isn’t backing down. The Entertainment Studios founder has resubmitted his bid to obtain ownership of BET and VH1.
After spending most of 2023 battling it out over ownership of BET, many media moguls have jumped ship. But Allen is closing out the year with a $3.5 billion bid he sent to Paramount Global on Tuesday, Dec. 19, Variety reported.
It’s a jump from the $2.7 billion Allen offered earlier this year for BET Media Group, which includes the BET cable channel, VH1, BET Studios, and streaming service BET+.
“You are pursuing an inside sale at a below-market price with management that will not yield the highest price for the stockholders,” Allen’s email read.
“We believe it would be an egregious breach of fiduciary duty by the Paramount Global management team and board of directors if BET is sold for anything less than the highest price, particularly, in order to provide a sweetheart deal to an insider at the expense of public shareholders.”
ata-slot="/21868623726/site264.tmus/amp3" data-multi-size="320x50,300x250" data-multi-size-validation="false" rtc-config='{"vendors": {"prebidappnexuspsp": {"PLACEMENT_ID": "27198239"}}, "timeoutMillis": 500}'>Offers were made to purchase BET earlier this year but Paramount Global ultimately decided the offers weren’t high enough. In October, Perry called out the “disrespectful” bidding process for BET.
“I was disappointed about it for a number of reasons,” he said at the Bloomberg Equality Summit in Atlanta, as covered by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The way it happened was disrespectful in a lot of ways.”
While not providing any additional details, Perry seemingly scoffed at how Paramount handled offers made by the likes of himself, Allen, and even Sean “P Diddy” Combs.
“Don’t try to get me to pay for something that’s not worth anywhere near the value” Paramount claimed it was.
When asked if he would reconsider if Paramount placed BET up for sale again, Perry said, “No.”
However, Allen hasn’t given up his hopes to own not only BET but VH1. The media mogul already owns several local television stations, as well as The Weather Channel, as part of his Entertainment Studios firm.
Other potential buyers of BET Media Group include BET CEO Scott Mills and Chinh Chu, a former executive at private-equity firm Blackstone who runs CC Capital Partners. According to Bloomberg, they’ve both offered a price tag of under $2 billion, which could put Byron Allen higher in the rankings of obtaining ownership.
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