In a deal which underlines both the increasing value of specialist-enthusiast content and the fusion of online and broadcast media, the $13bn Discovery Inc has acquired control of the cycling digital Play Sports Group (PSG). The UK-based company produces over 1,000 online videos annually on YouTube. It gets 45m monthly video views, 3.1m subscribers and 5.7m social followers for…
CloserStill pushes exhibition prices even higher
CloserStill Media, the 10-year-old London-based organiser of exhibitions principally in the healthcare, learning technologies and medical sectors, has been acquired by Providence Equity Partners for £340m. The price, based on an estimated 2018 operating profit of some £15m, is a multiplier of perhaps 22 (and more than 8 x revenue), a new high in a…
Our Top 10 in 2018
If you want some festive (re-) reading, here are links to our 10 most popular stories in the most successful year yet of Flashes & Flames: How Meredith upstaged Time Inc What now for the world’s biggest magazine? Can Daily Mail beat the family curse? Has Future (finally) found its way? Why Reed Exhibitions may be…
Our predictions for 2019
It’s that time of the year. Inevitably, our New Year predictions are a blend of deals that will (almost) definitely happen and those that might or should. See you in 2019. B2B Informa, now the world’s largest exhibitions group after acquiring UBM in 2018, divests its STM and B2B information companies UK B2B Centaur Media…
Immediate brings growth back to UK magazines
London-based Immediate Media has won the lucrative contract to publish Disney children’s magazines which, it is believed, will add some £12m (5%) to its revenues in 2019. The UK contract was formerly held by the £50m-revenue UK subsidiary of the Danish-owned Egmont group which first published Disney magazines in Scandinavia all of 70 years ago. The…
Euromoney snaps up The Deal
The UK-listed Euromoney Institutional Investor plc (Euromoney) is buying The Deal (an M&A database) and BoardEx (profiles of business leaders) from TheStreet Inc in a transaction which highlights the divergent fortunes of two financial media groups. On the one hand, the cashed-up, increasingly US-focused Euromoney is paying $87.3m for two subscriptions businesses that cost TheStreet…
PistonHeads sold, DriveTribe next?
CarGurus, the Nasdaq company which claims to be the largest online car vendor in the US and also the fastest-growing in the UK (where it’s still tiny), is buying PistonHeads from Haymarket Media Group for a price believed to be about £12-15m. The perfectly-branded online platform was launched in 1999 and acquired by Haymarket for…
How high will exhibition prices go?
Alone among the media-marketing sectors that pre-date the internet, exhibitions keep growing in profitability and value, and don’t investors know it. Whatever the potential digital disruption, trade shows continue to thrive (especially in the emerging economies) as real-life marketplaces in an increasingly digital world. Another week and another exhibitions group is up for grabs. This…
What next for RELX?
The Reed Business Information (RBI) division of the £32bn RELX Group is selling its Netherlands agricultural business media to a company being formed (curiously) by three prominent Dutch publishers. RELX will retain a minority share in the new company, Misset, founded by Derk Haank (ex CEO of Elsevier and Springer Nature), Cor Jan Willig (current…
Is it the end for Centaur Media?
Everybody in UK media likes Centaur: employees, journalists and even long-suffering investors who have stuck with its under-performing shares for a decade and more. The £70m-revenue UK company has been a prominent part of B2B media since the 1978 launch of Marketing Week by founder Graham Sherren. But now it’s preparing for a January sale. An…
