How Much Seinfeld Money Did Castle Rock Sell Away?

Ben Gilbert says Castle Rock sold to Ted Turner in December 93 for about $400 million. The owners got $100 million in cash, and about $300 million more went to paying off outstanding debt. Turner paid that sum out of pocket for Castle Rock, owner of a huge share of Seinfeld's profits, and the sale came before the first syndication cycle of Seinfeld.

Ben Gilbert had said it was a very good time to sell the company. David Rosenthal says Castle Rock should have waited anyway. Ben Gilbert says he is pretty sure that working through the whole waterfall shows Castle Rock made somewhere between two and two and a half billion dollars on Seinfeld syndication over the years, way more than the $400 million Turner paid.

Ben Gilbert says Castle Rock captured almost none of the syndication money because the owners sold the entire entity. David Rosenthal says Turner and TBS then sold to Time Warner, and the largest ownership share of the Seinfeld waterfall ended up in the Warner Brothers library. Ben Gilbert says Warner Brothers received the lion's share of the proceeds.