Five months after its rocky, inauspicious launch, Quibi “is exploring several strategic options including a possible sale,” the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The news comes as the short-form video platform launched by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman continues to struggle to find relevance and subscribers.
“Quibi has successfully launched a new business and pioneered a new form of storytelling and state-of-the-art platform,” a representative for Quibi told the Wall Street Journal. Katzenberg and Whitman, the rep added, “are committed to continuing to build the business in the way that gives the greatest experience for customers, greatest value for shareholders and greatest opportunity for employees.” The company had no comment on the possibility of a sale, which as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, is one of a number of potential endgames for Quibi in addition to raising more money or “going public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company.”
Quibi launched in April and struggled from the start amid the coronavirus pandemic, a fact that was not lost on Katzenberg. “I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus,” he told the New York Times in May. “Everything. But we own it.”
Originally designed for subscribers to watch on their mobile device, Quibi was a poor fit for an audience stuck at home and quarantined during the global health crisis. The closed-loop technology prevented users from watching Quibi programming on their laptops or streaming the content to their televisions via Apple Airplay or Google Chromecast, among other devices. Then there are the programs themselves, shows split into short-form chapters expressly designed to be watched on the go.
“I’m going to continue to believe, and argue, and preach that Quibi is not a substitute or a competitor for television,” Katzenberg told Vanity Fair in 2019. “Our [service] is exclusively about what you do from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on your phone. And what you’re doing today, if you’re in our core demographic of 25- to 35-year-olds, is you’re actually watching 60-70 min of YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. That growth is now a well-established consumer habit that Quibi is sailing into.”
But the pandemic rendered that idea somewhat obsolete. “My hope, my belief was that there would still be many in-between moments while sheltering in place,” Katzenberg told the Times. “There are still those moments, but it’s not the same. It’s out of sync.”
Back in June, the Wall Street Journal painted a relatively dire picture of Quibi’s future, claiming that by September the company would have spent $1 billion of its initial $1.75 billion in investor money. At the time, the publication stated Quibi would likely have to raise another $200 million by the midway point of 2021.
This latest Wall Street Journal story comes just days after Quibi finally received a bit of good news: network won a pair of Emmy Awards thanks to #FreeRayshawn stars Laurence Fishburne and Jasmine Cephas Jones, both of whom secured acting honors at the Creative Arts Emmys last week. But in keeping with the brand’s raison d’être, the good vibes were short-lived.
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