Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary and sports billionaire Frank McCourt warned Sunday that TikTok will go dark at midnight—and that only they can get it switched back on again.
The pair have come together to assemble a bid to buy the app in the United States from its owner, ByteDance, after bipartisan legislation ordered the Chinese tech giant to sell it or shut it down by Sunday at midnight.
Its 170 million American users first lost the service on Saturday evening, then got it back on Sunday, leading to accusations that the Chinese firm was pulling a stunt.
Meanwhile President-elect Donald Trump posted “Save TikTok” to his own social network, TruthSocial, and suggested he would accept a “50/50 deal” with China over its ownership. TikTok in turn posted pro-Trump messages on screens of users to first shut down then re-start the app.
But on Sunday, McCourt, best known for buying and selling the Los Angeles Dodgers and estimated by Forbes to be worth $1.4 billion, and O’Leary told the Daily Beast that their offer, called “The People’s Bid,” is the only way to keep it alive.
The pair were in Washington D.C. in a frantic last-minute bid to both persuade the Biden administration, in its last dying hours, to get behind their bid, and to woo the incoming Trump administration.
Their offer exploded out of Wall Street obscurity and into the public spotlight on Friday, when the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that TikTok had to sell or go dark by midnight Sunday, with the justices sweeping aside Trump’s brief that they should postpone the deadline for him to broker a compromise. There is no other known public offer for the app.
The two have assembled a $20 billion offer made up of cash from unnamed large investors and companies to buy the accounts and data of 170 million users from ByteDance. McCourt says that his “Project Liberty” internet company, which has fewer than 2 million users, would be able to take on 170 million TikTok users' accounts and the vast amount of data they hold. The bidders are forbidden from getting the algorithm which powers TikTok, under the law which ordered the sale or shutdown.
“We are sitting here saying there is a way to keep TikTok lit up,” McCourt said. “We are waiting for a signal from Biden about our bid.”
The duo have made their offer to TikTok’s bankers, who sources familiar named as Goldman Sachs, but have had no response. They need Biden’s Department of Justice to sign a declaration, by midnight, that their bid is legally “viable,” which would allow TikTok to legally remain functioning for another 90 days while they negotiate a final deal with ByteDance.
If they do not get that declaration, McCourt said, the app goes down at midnight. Service providers such as Apple, Google, Oracle and the mobile phone companies could face fines of $5,000 per day per user for allowing TikTok to continue.
But the two were also pushing the Trump administration to come to the table, including holding talks with David Urban, a Trump adviser who had also represented TikTok, and Republican leaders.
Trump invited TikTok CEO Chew Show Zi to his Monday inauguration and said he would immediately order a 90-day pause on the sale or shutdown deadline.
O’Leary said that Trump’s offer of a 50/50 deal was a “negotiating tactic” and said it was “noise, not signal.”
“He is using it as leverage.”
O’Leary, 70, Canadian-American, has pushed the bid directly with Trump, 78, at Mar-a-Lago but has had no public support from the incoming president. McCourt, 71, is less connected to Trump and has been predominantly a small-amount donor to Democrats.
O’Leary is also pushing a crowd-funding portion of his bid, allowing small businesses to buy equity in the new venture. He said that the “Shark Tank generation” of small entrepreneurs had turned to TikTok because of its lower costs and would be hit by a shutdown.
“Six million businesses are making a living on it,” he said. “They use TikTok daily. TikTok has 60 per cent of direct spend for small companies. This way they can buy into it.”
The potential for TikTok to simply stop working represents the first and perhaps least expected crisis of Trump’s new presidency. Republicans in Congress on Sunday voiced concern at any deal less than full disposal by the Chinese. Even if it goes down, the law allows negotiations to continue for it to be bought.
McCourt voiced confidence that their bid will succeed. “We are the only viable bid,” he said.
