Will a Last-Minute Deal Save TikTok in the U.S.? Frank McCourt-Led Investor Group Reportedly Eyes $20 Billion+ Bid

Will a last-minute sale save TikTok from shutting down in the U.S.? Former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt is moving forward with a reportedly $20 billion bid to purchase the ByteDance-owned app.

The Project Liberty founder McCourt confirmed as much yesterday, in a formal announcement message. We briefly covered the development when providing an update on the platform’s Supreme Court challenge to the relevant law.

Without retreading too much ground there, that law is compelling ByteDance to cash out of TikTok or effectively shut down the platform by January 19th in the States. A high-stakes oral argument before the Supreme Court is set for Friday, and Beijing-based ByteDance is adamant that it won’t sell under any circumstances.

This clear-cut declaration hasn’t stopped investors – including but certainly not limited to the initially mentioned Frank McCourt – from lining up to buy the app’s stateside operation.

We’ve charted the purchase interest from the get-go, and McCourt’s exploring a deal specifically via a group called The People’s Bid for TikTok. These details aren’t new, but the addition of businessman Kevin O’Leary to the effort only emerged yesterday.

O’Leary himself first expressed interest in buying TikTok closer to the beginning of 2024. And as part of the just-revealed tie-up, the 70-year-old has folded his TikTok-buyout crowdfunding platform, WonderfulTikTok.com, into People’s Bid.

All told, the latter has secured north of $20 billion in capital commitments from investors, according to Reuters’ description of McCourt’s comments. Per the same outlet, the billionaire expects the Supreme Court to uphold the TikTok ban law and is anticipating more earnest sales discussions with ByteDance after the fact.

Meanwhile, O’Leary has been in contact with President-elect Trump (who’s urged the Supreme Court to pause the ban law until he assumes office). And in a recent X post, the Montreal native O’Leary emphasized that he and McCourt wouldn’t insist on the inclusion of much-coveted algorithms.

In short, ByteDance (part of which belongs to the Chinese government) has long considered the algorithms a key component of TikTok – and, in turn, a major roadblock to any potential sale.

“What Frank McCourt and I wanted to eliminate is the misconception that we can’t sell it because no one will buy it without the algorithm,” O’Leary wrote in part. “NOT true. We’ll buy it without the algorithm. We don’t need them. We’ll do it ourselves and make TikTok wonderful again.”

As to where things go from here, all eyes are now on TikTok’s previously highlighted January 10th oral argument before the Supreme Court.

Also worth bearing in mind is that President Biden has until January 19th to decide whether to extend the forced-sale deadline by up to 90 days. Lastly, regarding what the post-TikTok landscape may look like, many on social media are already discussing the possibility of using VPNs to access the platform.

And as the ban law zeroes in particularly on the app’s digital-marketplace distribution and updates, Reuters “experts” believe it’s “likely” that existing users would (at least for a time) have post-ban access. Needless to say, however, there isn’t exactly a straightforward playbook for the unprecedented situation, and the video-sharing giant could only survive for so long without releasing updates.