We’re triangulating information from a couple of sources who have information about the size of the Comcast/Fandango deal. It sounds like Comcast paid $200 million, or perhaps a bit more. We’re also hearing Fandango revenue is in the $50m/year range, split roughly evenly between ticket sales and advertising. This isn’t firm yet - our sources are in the same ballpark but they aren’t agreeing on an exact number.
As a public company, Comcast will need to disclose the purchase price only if it is deemed “material,” which is a somewhat subjective standard. Given Comcast’s market cap of $85 billion and change, it would take a much bigger transaction to trigger the materiality threshold.
Comcast usually buys cheap, AT&T Broadband, TechTV, QVC, parts of Adelphia, MGM and United Artists. As far as I remember all of those are considered to be fantastic deals.
Their remnant inventory on their cable networks enables them to promote and distribute things they buy to a wide audience.
Yeah, I don’t know but that seems pretty low, especially in the recent climate. I think a good choice too.
What made Fandango the one and not any of the other video sharing sites, why now and not later?
200 million for fandango? How is that in any way a good deal. Revenues of 50m on mediocre profits. Especially when the competition continues to mount. Sometimes I think these companies have a 5 year decision process. They actually started to buy fandango in 2002, but it just finally went through. Next month Comcast is going to acquire American Dixie Cup and String Company. They do short range communication better than anyone else.
Lot’s of money in …approx $51M
That said, impressive return for a dot bomb survivor. VC’s got back their original $51M and then probably made another $75M.
Chuck Davis did good! The ROI on this was maybe a 2-3X given the threatre chains kept a bunch of the equity all along. This isnt about technology you dweebs!!! this is about distribution alliances.
Fandango is worth every penny. I usually visit it about 10 times a week.
So based on Flixter.com’s current numbers they should get like $1 Billion right now???
Someone go tell Flixster it’s time to SELL!!!
5 year purchase or 5 year plan it will become MORE profitable now that Comcast and promote it on a ton of channels “cheaper” than the previous owner.
- great deal for a dot - com bust / its amazing that they could hang around -
- I hope the pay off is great for everyone -
Typically when it takes this long for a company to come around, the equity gets diluted quite a bit. You just have too many people coming and going over time to maintain a healthy bit for everyone.
Flixster has no theater relationships, and no $50 million in revenue, this is not just about pageviews.
Great. More money for those paperbag puppet commercials!
Comcast is a natural fit for this relationship and will most likely increase fandango’s revenue. It’s the only service I use for picking up tix…
I’d like to see something like this take place for Opentable…it’s a great service, like fandango, just needs greater reach and an easier buy-in for restaurants.
@ Brian, ha! I thought about their commercials the minute I saw this too.
I think what’s moreso very interesting here is what Comcast is cooking up that prompted a move like this. I think the video and movie space is going to get very interesting in the coming year as bigger fish come in. AT&T is rolling out its initiative (albeit with a lot of criticism, I guess), Verizon. I think it’s yet to be seen what they all do and where they play, but a cool evolution no less.
I want to believe Comcast has something slick and sexy up its sleeve. Though we’ll see.