News Corp/IGN Sells Off Rotten Tomatoes To Flixster; Retains Minority in Combo
News Corp.‘s digital unit is continuing on its non-core asset sale plan: first Photobucket to Ontela, and now comes the sale of popular movie reviews site Rotten Tomatoes, to Flixster. As was the structure with the sale of Photobucket, News Corp (NYSE: NWS) unit IGN Entertainment, which owned RT, will get a minority stake in Flixster as part of the sale and get one board seat. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but unlikely the sale price (at least in terms of cash) was very high. The deal talks were first reported by AllThingsD last month.
SEE ALSO: News Corp.‘s Photobucket Merges With Ontela; Receives New Funding
Both the sites will remain separate. They had already been working together in the past, including a recent deal that syndicates critic reviews from Rotten Tomatoes to Flixster’s online movie community. IGN bought RT in 2004, before it was itself bought by then Fox Interactive. Of late, it has been trying to refocus IGN on its core of game-related and men’s-lifestyle offerings, and the sale of RT is part of that effort. Flixster has its own slightly sad story: it was in deep in talks two years ago, when apps first started becoming hot, for a sale to IAC (NSDQ: IACI), but stuck to a crazy asking price of $150 million. IAC scoffed and walked off. Flixter had to do a $8 million round in mid 208 instead.
Release after the jump.
——————————————————————
Flixster Inc. Acquires Rotten Tomatoes
From IGN Entertainment
Combination of Top Brands Creates a Leader in the
Online Movie Space, Reaching 30 Million Monthly Moviegoers;
IGN to Receive Equity Stake in Flixster
SAN FRANCISCO (January 4, 2010) – Flixster Inc., producer of the world’s largest online movie community at http://www.Flixster.com, today announced that it has acquired Rotten Tomatoes from IGN Entertainment. IGN, a division of News Corporation, will receive a minority equity stake in Flixster as part of the acquisition. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
The combination of Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes reaches a huge global movie audience of an estimated 30 million monthly visitors worldwide across multiple platforms: on the Internet, through web-based social networks, and via mobile apps for the iPhone, Blackberry and Android devices.
Both Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes will continue to be available to movie fans as individual properties. Together, Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes give movie audiences an unprecedented total picture of movie trends and opinions, combining half a million reviews from leading critics with 2.3 billion user ratings and reviews.
“To use movie terminology, we think this is a blockbuster double-bill,” said Joe
— more —
Flixster-Rotten Tomatoes / 2-2-2
Greenstein, co-founder and CEO of Flixster. “It’s a huge step forward in our goal of connecting users to their own personalized world of movies on any platform they choose. We can’t think of a better pairing for movie fans and our technology partners.”
Flixster’s president and COO Steve Polsky added, “Rotten Tomatoes has built a fantastically well-known brand that moviegoers trust when making their decisions. Combined with Flixster’s social networking and word-of-mouth, we’re creating the leading movie destination on the Internet.”
“Joining Rotten Tomatoes with Flixster creates a company that can dominate the online movie category,” said Roy Bahat, president of IGN Entertainment, who will join Flixster’s board of directors as an observer. “This also enables IGN to focus on serving the male 18-to-34 audience – especially videogamers – and the advertisers looking to reach them.”
Flixster already operates the leading embedded movie applications on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, iGoogle (NSDQ: GOOG), and for the iPhone, Android devices, Blackberry and Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre. Together, Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes will be the most comprehensive, one-stop movie-information provider for both end users and technology partners, including: a database of more than 250,000 movies; 2.3 billion user reviews; 500,000 critic reviews; more than 20,000 trailers and videos; the well-known Tomatometer™ and Flixster Scores; unique movie news and editorial content; category-leading social-networking features; localized movie showtime information; theater maps; and online ticketing.
Prior to the acquisition, Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes partnered in several areas, including a recent deal that syndicates critic reviews from Rotten Tomatoes to Flixster’s online movie community, both on the Web and via Flixster’s mobile apps.
Since its inception in early 2006, Flixster has rapidly become the Web’s largest community for movie fans, with more than 20 million monthly users.
As the web’s leading aggregator of reviews from top movie critics, Rotten Tomatoes offers the most comprehensive guide to movies, and its Tomatometer™ rating – based on the published opinions of hundreds of film critics – is a trusted measurement
— more —
Flixster-Rotten Tomatoes / 3-3-3
of movie quality for millions of moviegoers. The site has also seen tremendous year-over year growth, with its monthly unique user base rising on average nearly 40 percent in each of the past five months compared to the same months in 2008.
The deal follows a series of moves by IGN Entertainment to refocus its efforts on building out its suite of game-related and men’s-lifestyle offerings. The company recently launched Game On, a videogames-dedicated portal on MSN, and its network of sites currently reaches the most concentrated audience of males 18 to 34 and technology influencers on the Web today.
About Flixster
At home or on the go, Flixster provides audiences with access to local theaters and showtimes, trailers and quizzers, plus the ability to post reviews and exchange opinions with their friends – and the entire worldwide Flixster community. Flixster users have posted more than 2.3 billion reviews and have created literally hundreds of thousands of movie quizzes. Flixster’s online homepage is at http://www.flixster.com, and its “Movies” application is installed on more than 20 percent of iPhones in the U.S. Flixster applications are also available for the Blackberry, Palm Pre and for Android-powered mobile devices. The privately held Flixster Inc. is based in San Francisco, with representatives in Los Angeles, New York and Seattle.
About IGN Entertainment
IGN Entertainment, a unit of News Corporation, is the leading Internet media and services provider focused on the videogame and entertainment enthusiast markets. Collectively, IGN’s properties reached more than 47.5 million unique users worldwide in October 2009, according to Internet audience measurement firm comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) Media Matrix. IGN’s network of videogame-related properties (IGN.com, GameSpy, FilePlanet, TeamXbox, Direct2Drive and others) is one of the Web’s leading videogame information destinations. IGN also owns the leading male lifestyle website AskMen.com. In addition, IGN provides technology for online game play in videogames. IGN is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, with offices across North America, Europe and Australia.
Posted In: Money, M&A & Venture Capital, Mergers & Acquisitions, Companies, News Corp., Fox, Fox Interactive Media, flixster, rotten tomatoes

YouTube Videos
Social Standing
Which media brands are getting a lift from Tweeters and bloggers right now -- and which are getting panned?
Show Me: