Washington Post: Comcast Owned Fandango Buys Movies.com From Disney
Posted by Sahar Sarid , Wednesday, 25 June 2008

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Via the Washington Post :

    "So Comcast ( NSDQ: CMCSA) couldn’t buy Disney ( NYSE: DIS) a few years ago, but it has now succeeded in buying a part of it, sort of: Fandango, the online movie tickets service that Comcast bought a year ago, has bought out movies info site Movies.com from Disney, for an undisclosed sum.

    Movies.com, under its previous name MrShowbiz.com, was one of first online movie news and info sites. Then, after it morphed into Movies.com, Disney partnered with Fox to turn it into an online movies-on-demand site, but it didn’t go past planning stages. Movies.com earns revenue through online advertising, while Fandango’s revenue comes about half from advertising and half from charging a fee of about $1 per ticket that it sells, reports THR. Fandango’s ad team will sell both sites.

    Disney said a dozen of its Disney Internet Group employees will be reassigned because of the Movies.com sale and no layoffs are expected. The disposal by Disney is in keeping with its renewed focus on Disney, ABC and ESPN brands, the company said."

Without knowing the number they paid and more about the Movies.com business and numbers it is hard to know if this is a good deal or not. Looking solely at the importance of having the domain name Movies.com in your corner, I do believe that even if Fandango have overpaid, with new growth initiatives, a lot can be justified.

More on this article on Elliot Silver’ blog .

Source: Posted on TheConceptualist by Sahar Sarid -- Reprinted with permission -- June 25, 2008
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