DISH Network To Acquire Blockbuster

DISH Network has won the bankruptcy court auction of Blockbuster in a transaction valued at $320 million. Although they’ll surely invest much more as they attempt a turn around of the sullied but “highly recognizable” brand.

At first blush, their play struck me as highly bizarre. However, acquiring a streaming video solution and 1,700 brick & mortar outposts is potentially cheaper and certainly quicker than starting from scratch. And you know DISH intends to leverage their new storefront as a means of marketing satellite service when the deal closes in the next month or so. Although Blockbuster didn’t previously seem to have much success reselling TiVo or the PS3.

Lastly, DISH has been picking up spectrum and could conceivably make a cell phone or broadband play… and perhaps Blockbuster is where one would acquire a DISH Network cellphone as part of a triple play?

6 thoughts on “DISH Network To Acquire Blockbuster”

  1. What is more interesting to ME, the trader is that BB went from billions in Market Cap in 2004, to 288 million today, and NFLX went from 800mm IPO in 2002, to 13 BILLION today in Market cap. CRAZY creative destruction at its best!

  2. The $320 mill isn’t crazy, but as you say they’ll spend a lot more before this is done. I can’t imagine this is a good idea. Sorry but physical media is dying and those storefronts aren’t going to be worth much sooner rather than later.

  3. Hmm that graphic is very misleading. I don’t know actual numbers, but I bet BB’s revenue is still higher than Netflix’s. Revenue says nothing about profitability however.

  4. Yeah, and as someone wrote in the original article that the graphic came from their revenue must be higher than zero. I just kinda like it because it shows the companies trends going in opposite directions and I’m tired of seeing the same Blockbuster window with P2P on it in every post. I suppose I could run the picture I took of the big trash bin in front of my former Blockbuster which was recently gutted.

  5. I think they want the name to market blockbuster bombs to the US military.

    DISH network already knows how to handle satellite communication. Now they can move from the consumer space to the military-industrial space….

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