Fandango Buys Movies.com from Disney

The Washington Post is reporting that Fandango recently purchased from Disney for an undisclosed sum. Fandango is a subsidiary of Comcast, a company that unsuccessfully tried to acquire Disney a few years ago. The article cites Disney’s desire to remain focused on its core brands (ABC, ESPN, and Disney) as the reason for selling Movies.com.

I understand that one needs to remain focused on its core competency, but doesn’t Disney make movies still? Doesn’t Disney have more than enough talent to be able to continue operating Movies.com without impacting its other businesses? I think this is a big buy for Comcast. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Fandango become rebranded as Movies.com, giving it more of a presence in the full movie market, rather than being a movie preview and movie ticket facilitator.

While the price may be undisclosed at the moment, the purchase price may be revealed at a later date, as both Comcast and Disney are publicly traded companies, and the price for the domain name and accompanying business could have an impact on earnings, albeit minimal.

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Written by Elliot Silver on June 23, 2008
Posted in: Domain Sales, General Domain Information

Comments (9)

Too Many Secrets

June 23rd, 2008 at 9:02 am

Elliot,

Wow. Great purchase for Fandango !

- Richard

Andrew Reberry

June 23rd, 2008 at 9:36 am

I assume this could be the largest domain sale on record, if it comes out.

Rick Gupta

June 23rd, 2008 at 9:38 am

Disney really screwed up on this one unless they retained partial ownership. Any Silicon Valley PE firm can find the right team to develop this and package it as a seperate entity for an eventual ipo. A competitor to itunes is the first thing that comes to mind. If it was a straight cash deal, Comcast prob made one of their best deals ever.

owen frager

June 23rd, 2008 at 10:44 am

Hope they change the fandango name- that’s not voice-search friendly
btw, Best name in the lot hollywood.com has been owned and developed for years by x-USA Network founders in Boca and doesn’t do much…. they are one to watch as well.

Yahoo Movies IMHO has the best movie section- the layout and customer and critic reviews when they match A-B- you never are disappointed.

And finally, Hollywood is being bought out by India and renamed “Bollywood” I am not kidding. That may be behind Disney’s move.

Shows how in a changing world how little security we have in investments based on past needs.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/18/business/17dream.php

Gordon

June 23rd, 2008 at 11:29 am

Love the name, but disagree that you can just take a name and turn it into an IPO. You still need to be able to run a business…how many generics have had an IPO and lived to tell about it?

Germ

June 23rd, 2008 at 12:33 pm

Wow. What a blunder for Disney. I don’t care how much they got for it this is a big mistake for them. Why ANY movie company would let go of movies.com at ANY price I have no idea.

Owen: I used to work at Hollywood.com (back when it was “Big Entertainment”) the owners (well it’s public but the Founders anyway) have little vision. They’ve started great projects (Sci-Fi Channel) but I wouldn’t expect much from Hollywood.com beyond what it is today. I can comfortably state they’re probably quite happy with what it is. It’s limited success is completely tied to the domain name. At least they realize that however. They acquired the company solely for domain and promptly liquidated everything else that came with it = smart.

David J Castello

June 23rd, 2008 at 1:13 pm

Please file this under the “Yes, Virginia, the name does matter” category.

June 23rd, 2008 at 3:08 pm

They killed my movie site!!! I tried Fandango & Yahoo & AMCTheatres & a few others, but nothing is as good as movies.com. All the extras it had were great! Fandango has a gazillion ads all over the home page that are bigger than the content and it’s hard to read anything. I’m going to miss movies.com.

Adam

June 23rd, 2008 at 9:45 pm