Another Hefner Makes $100M Bid for Playboy

From Hef to Coop? Hugh Hefner's youngest son Cooper has made a $100 million offer to buy the Playboy brand, reports the Wall Street Journal. The 33-year-old Cooper engineered the all-cash offer through his Hefner Capital private equity firm, per the Hollywood Reporter. "It's a great American company and a great American brand, outside of my personal connection to it," Cooper tells the Journal. But it "has been managed to a state of potentially nonexistence." Under the deal, he would acquire the intellectual property and assets of Playboy Enterprises from parent company Playboy Group.

Cooper previously served as Playboy's chief creative officer for three years until 2019, two years after his father's death at age 91. He and Hefner's three other children have since sold off their stakes in the company, which stopped publishing a print magazine in 2020. Among other things, Cooper says he would take advantage of the brand's familiarity to strike new licensing and partnership deals. "You could have all the money in the world and it would be difficult to build the type of brand recognition that Playboy has," he says. (Hefner's widow: "I must have been brainwashed.")