Sports media group Better Collective has agreed to buy Canada's Playmaker Capital in a deal that will nearly double its audience across the globe.

Why it matters: Sports betting media has proven to be a bright spot in an otherwise difficult digital publishing landscape.

• Better Collective’s U.S. business, anchored by the Action Network, doubled in revenue between 2021 and 2022.
• The Sporting News, another sports website that makes a lot of money sending traffic to sportsbooks, raised $15 million in September.

Driving the news: Copenhagen-based Better Collective, which runs various sports betting sites, says the cash and stock deal will allow it to become the sports media market leader in the Americas.

• The total price consideration of the deal is $188 million.
• Shares of Toronto-listed Playmaker Capital closed at 49 cents on Monday, giving it a current market value of $111 million Canadian dollars ($81 million).

Details: Playmaker houses a slew of popular sports media brands, including Yardbarker, a U.S. sports and entertainment news site, The Nation Network (TNN), a sports fan website with a large hockey audience, and Futbol Sites, a South American digital sports brand.

The big picture: The Playmaker deal is Better Collective's second-largest acquisition ever, following its $240 million purchase of Action Network in 2021.

• Better Collective began growing its North American footprint in 2019 with the acquisitions of sports betting-focused sites, including RotoGrinders Network, VegasInsider.com and ScoresandOdds.com.
• So far, its U.S. expansion has proven successful. The company reported annual revenues of $289 million in 2022, with $100 million coming from the U.S.

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Bloomberg Media now has over 500,000 subscribers, the firm's chief digital officer Julia Beizer told Axios. The firm introduced its $34.99 monthly digital subscription in 2018.

Why it matters: Most U.S. national news outlets are eyeing politics or consumer topics, like wellness, to fuel subscription growth. Bloomberg is leaning into niche professional audiences and international users.

• "Where we do best is with business decision-makers, particularly in finance and tech and [telecommunications]," Beizer said.
• Bloomberg Media is also looking to attract modern business leaders outside of finance that it hasn't historically engaged, like HR leaders.

By the numbers: The majority (60%) of Bloomberg Media's subscribers are in the U.S. The rest are in Europe and the Middle East (20%) and Asia Pacific 20%.

• Those numbers, Beizer notes, are consistent with the company's traffic patterns. Bloomberg Media has pushed aggressively to expand its audience abroad, even outside of major financial centers.
• Beizer declined to say how many of Bloomberg Media's subscriptions are enterprise — meaning they are sold to companies instead of individuals — but said the firm is looking to expand in that area. (Bloomberg only began selling enterprise subscriptions in May 2022.)

The big picture: Now that Bloomberg Media's subscription business has reached a critical mass, Beizer said the company is focused on making it more sustainable.

• "We've been bringing users on for longer terms — people who want to stay with us for annual plans as opposed to monthly plans," she said.
• Improvements to the user experience, like removing programmatic ads, better payment processes and tinkering with its paywall, have helped make the product stickier.

What's next: Asked when Bloomberg expects to hit 1 million subscribers, Beizer said, "I don't have a timeline for it, but I know it's not going to take another five and a half years."

The first month of the Israel-Hamas war was a prime-time ratings win for CNN and Fox News, while MSNBC lost viewers.

By the numbers: The average nightly prime-time audience for CNN and Fox News increased 17% and 10%, respectively, during the first four weeks of the war compared to the four weeks prior.

• MSNBC's prime-time audience, meanwhile, fell 11% during that same time period.
• The first week of the war proved the strongest for Fox News and the weakest for MSNBC in terms of prime-time ratings.
• Total day viewership patterns are consistent with the prime-time numbers, per The Wrap.

Of note: The average audience increase calculation for Fox News does not include its Sept. 27 ratings, which were an outlier due to the network hosting the second Republican presidential debate.

• Including those debate numbers, Fox's prime-time audience was still up around 3% for the first four weeks of the war compared to the four weeks prior.

Yes, but: MSNBC has since started to claw back. The network saw a significant jump in prime-time viewers in the second week of the war compared to the first.

• Prime-time ratings in weeks three and four were also up compared to the first, but have dropped sequentially since the second week.

What to watch: How long any viewership gains last.

• Prime-time viewership across all three networks was the highest during the third week of the war, but dropped significantly last week.
• CNN saw the steepest week-over-week prime-time viewership declines last week, followed by Fox then MSNBC.
• News engagement with the Ukraine war began to drop off after about a month.

Editor's note: Sara is a CNN contributor.

Now that Disney and Comcast have formally set in motion the sale process for Hulu, it will be a long and arduous road to determine how much the 16-year-old streaming service is worth, Axios' Tim Baysinger writes.

• Why it matters: Nailing down the final price of Hulu could add fireworks and a premium for Disney when all is said and done.

Driving the news: Disney agreed to pay an initial $8.61 billion for Comcast's 33% stake. An appraisal process will determine whether Disney pays more.

The big picture: Ever since a 2019 "put/call" agreement between the two heavyweights, Disney and Comcast have been at odds over Hulu's true value.

• Hulu has been a tricky asset to value largely because it relies on licensing deals with other companies and thus doesn't own its own content.

By the numbers: Hulu is one of the few streaming services — the only major one outside of Netflix — that has ever turned a profit.

• Hulu has one of the highest monthly ARPU (average revenue per user/subscriber) of any streaming service — largely due to its high price point and live TV offering — doubling Disney+.
• Hulu also accounted for the bulk of Disney's $873 million streaming advertising revenue for the entire quarter.

What's next: Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan will decide on Hulu's value, and if the difference between the two valuations is more than 10%, a third bank will break the tie.

• While a few analysts have put some figures on what they think Hulu is worth — anywhere between $30 million to $60 million — most are wary of publicly saying anything because they want to be that tie-breaking appraiser.

Sign up for Axios Pro Media Deals authored by Tim Baysinger and Kerry Flynn.

IAC, one of the country's largest internet holding companies, warned regulators last week that unless the government protects copyrighted material from being used by generative AI, "the creation and publication of high-quality original content will wither and die."

• IAC is home to Dotdash Meredith, the largest digital and print publisher in the U.S.

Details: In the memo, representatives from IAC and Dotdash Meredith lay out a doomsday vision of what the web would become if copyright law doesn't evolve to force generative AI companies to pay for access to quality content.

• If generative AI firms aren't forced to pay publishers for copyrighted content, the internet will become "unrecognizable" and users won't trust it, they argue.

The other side: AI companies argue that they do not knowingly use copyrighted material or that their use is protected by the fair use principle.

Between the lines: The comments were submitted to the U.S. Copyright Office to be considered as part of a broader study of generative AI that will be used by regulators to analyze the current state of copyright law.

• The News/Media Alliance — a trade group that represents thousands of newspapers, digital outlets and magazines — also submitted comments, including a study that shows the extent to which AI companies rely on premium content and news to train their algorithms.
• In its submission to the Copyright Office, IAC said it is in "general agreement" with the views expressed by the NMA, but is writing separately to address matters of "special relevance" to its business.
• For example, Dotdash Meredith is home to free websites that distribute health information and financial recommendations that aren't exactly journalism but are vetted by medical experts and business professionals.

👀 What to watch: Earlier this year, IAC was eyeing the creation of a coalition that would advocate on behalf of publishers negotiating with generative AI companies.

• A formal coalition never materialized, sources told Axios, but publishers are still working together on the issue.

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America is turning to Brits to save U.S. journalism.

1. Over the weekend, the Washington Post announced that Will Lewis would become publisher and chief executive of the historic newspaper company in 2024 — and face the task of making the company profitable again.
2. In August, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that former New York Times and BBC executive Mark Thompson will lead CNN as the network's new worldwide chairman and CEO. Reviews of Thompson inside CNN have been positive so far.
3. Early reviews of Emma Tucker, who became the first woman editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal less than a year ago, have also been good.

🔭 What to watch: Whether the British leadership will bring a sense of metabolism and grit to three of America's most powerful legacy newsrooms.

• Tucker has reportedly wondered about some of her new American colleagues: "What do they all do all day?"

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