Billionaire McCourt Unveils Ambitious Plan to Reshape TikTok

American billionaire Frank McCourt, former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is preparing a comprehensive overhaul of TikTok's business model as part of his bid to acquire the popular short-form video app, reports Reuters. McCourt, who has secured $20 billion in funding commitments from a consortium of investors, outlined his vision to Reuters, emphasizing user empowerment and a shift from advertising-centric revenue to a model incorporating e-commerce and data licensing.

McCourt's plan involves fundamentally altering TikTok's advertising model, granting users greater control over the ads and content they see. He envisions a future where TikTok generates revenue through e-commerce and by licensing user data for AI training models, all with explicit user consent, thus reducing reliance on advertising revenue.

"When you give permission for your data to be used and you receive compensation, it's flipping this 180 degrees and giving the user the power," McCourt told Reuters.

McCourt's proposal, however, faces significant hurdles. TikTok has repeatedly maintained that it cannot be divested from its Chinese owner, ByteDance. McCourt's bid for TikTok would exclude the app's core algorithm, aiming to simplify the acquisition process given the Chinese government's 2020 addition of content recommendation algorithms to its export control list.

McCourt is proceeding with the assumption that the Supreme Court will uphold a US law mandating the sale of TikTok due to national security concerns, after which ByteDance might be more open to negotiations. He has already engaged in preliminary discussions with members of Presidentelect Donald Trump's incoming administration, as Trump has indicated a change in stance on TikTok from his previous attempts to ban the app in 2020.

McCourt's team is also actively seeking a new CEO for the transformed TikTok, with reports suggesting that they have approached V. Pappas, TikTok's former chief operating officer. McCourt's plan also includes migrating TikTok's technology onto an open-source protocol developed by Project Liberty, an organization he founded.

"This is both a big project to scale the technology that we've built, but it is also a vision for a better internet," McCourt stated. "We're talking to people who share that vision and have the capacity and skills to do both."