Bankrupt Gawker Media Group is hours away from being sold.
A handful of suitors stepped to the plate by Monday’s 5 p.m. bidding deadline — ahead of a Tuesday auction — each with a plan to take the struggling Web properties and turn them around.
However, the flagship Gawker.com may not be around for the ride.
The gossip blog is such “a PR problem” that some bidders have suggested they’d pay more if the company’s namesake site weren’t included in the package of sites on sale, two sources close to the sale process told The Post.
Those bidders, if successful at Tuesday’s auction, are likely to shutter the scurrilous blog, the sources said.
“No one wants Gawker itself,” one source noted. “The winner will probably shut it down.”
The end of Nick Denton’s digital publishing career was a long time coming.
Gawker Media got itself in hot water several times, often for writing sleazy stories on individuals’ sex lives.
For example, in 2007 its now-shuttered Valleywag site, which focused on gossip from Silicon Valley, posted an item saying that tech investor Peter Thiel is gay.
Last year, Gawker.com wrote about a top Condé Nast executive’s private exchanges with a male escort.
And finally, Gawker.com posted a sex tape showing former WWE wrestler Hulk Hogan (real name Terry Bollea) having sex with the then-wife of his former best friend, radio personality Bubba the Love Sponge.
It was the Hogan story that led to a high-profile invasion-of-privacy lawsuit — which brought a jury verdict against Gawker and Denton for $140 million.
Thiel admitted he helped fund the Hogan lawsuit — currently on appeal.
Gawker Media attracted 65 million unique users in the latest month — led by the 20 million US uniques for its online review destination Gizmodo.
Gawker.com drew 12.8 million US unique visitors in July 2016.
Denton told Recode recently that Gawker Media saw a small operating profit in the first six months of the year.
That will soon flow to a new owner.
Auction bidding will begin Tuesday morning at the law offices of Ropes & Gray.
Gawker Media is being pursued hard by gaming publisher Ziff Davis, which owns sites including IGN and PCMag.
Ziff Davis submitted a $90 million stalking horse bid, but Univision is tipped to be the favorite at the auction.
The sale will likely be a sad ending to Denton’s ongoing efforts to build an American blog empire, although his association with the company may not be ending.
A source confirmed that Denton would continue to work as an adviser to one of the bidders, thought to be Ziff Davis, should it prevail.
Meanwhile, sources say that Jim Bankoff’s Comcast-backed Vox Media did not ultimately step up with the cash for a discussed joint bid with Penske Media Corporation.
“They didn’t have the cash,” said a source.
Vox Media owns sites including Recode, SB Nation and Curbed. Bankoff didn’t return a call for comment.