The difficulty really was that it was Roberts personal Blog and not a german Techcrunch. And I think the publicity of the sale actually hurt the price, since it was a personal blog and will be very difficult to maintain.
If the sale had happened non public a lot of SEO people would have tried to buy it but press attention is not really something they want.
I think he should have invited more authors to the blog in the months before the sale to make the blog less personal and more like Techcrunch. But that's not his style.
Comparing it to TechCrunch is a bit of a stretch, to be honest. I'd almost say they paid too much, given that Robert Basic will no longer be contributing. What's a blog without the people?
I would guess that a signifigant number of people that read techcrunch have never heard of michael arrington, they just casually read it for the tech news.
Arrington has a bunch of staff writing entries. Not so on BT as far as I can tell. The new owners are apparently searching for volunteers to write articles.
In Germany blogs aren't that popular like in the US. It is not a main source of news. It is more opinion publishing. There are only a few who can live from blogging.
I think he should have invited more authors to the blog in the months before the sale to make the blog less personal and more like Techcrunch. But that's not his style.