This is the best article I've found, and it's more recent than the NYT article you've posted:

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/bankruptcy-law/the-onions-infowars-takeover-follows-complicated-legal-journey

I still find dedicated legal reporting to be better than general reporting. And this is a complicated history touching on a lot of different areas of the law.

But the key fact here is that Alex Jones was allowed to keep control over the business assets while his appeals are pending, but has run out of money and cannot continue running his own business. At that point, the receiver overseeing things (where Alex Jones can run the business but can't transfer assets out or pay anything not directly related to running the business) saw that things had changed enough that he needed to keep the business assets valuable, and that Alex Jones himself couldn't.

So this licensing deal is a way to keep the assets valuable: keep paying rent on the studio itself, keep all the broadcasting and recording equipment under one roof, keep all the unexpired contracts.

If Alex Jones can't come up with a plan to actually pay the rent and keep all the stuff, the court is basically going to have no choice but to agree that there's no way to keep things as they are while the appeals wind through the system, and a temporary licensing agreement is the best option until the appeals go through.

Most of the reporting doesn't seem to appreciate that Jones' prospects of blocking this in the courts is dependent on a practical hurdle, not just a legal one: he can't afford to keep it. That's what's changed since December 2024 when The Onion's first attempt to buy this stuff was blocked (by another federal bankruptcy court, with a different judge than this state court judge overseeing the receiver).