Comcast's Fandango acquires Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster to build movie-discovery empire
Rotten Tomatoes is the most popular online aggregator of movie and TV reviews from professional critics and fans. Flixster is a website and mobile app for discovering movies, with more than 50 million app installs.
"Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes are invaluable resources for movie fans, and we look forward to growing these successful properties, driving more theatrical ticketing and super-serving consumers with all their movie needs," said Fandango President Paul Yanover in a statement about the deal. "Our new expanded network will offer unparalleled capabilities for all of our exhibition, studio, and promotional partners to reach a massive entertainment audience with innovative marketing and ticketing solutions that benefit from original content, home entertainment products, 'super tickets,' gifts with purchase, and other new promotional opportunities."
With this acquisition, Fandango's combined audience reach will grow to more than 63 million unique visitors per month, according to its release, which did not specify how much it acquired the brands for.
Warner Bros. Entertainment will take a minority ownership stake in Fandango and serve as an ongoing strategic partner. Fandango will continue to operate as a unit of NBCUniversal/Comcast.