Red Ventures, the digital media and marketing juggernaut based in Fort Mill, S.C., has approached strategic buyers about offloading tech news and reviews site CNET, five sources familiar with the effort told Axios.
Entertainment company Fandom Inc. has acquired the digital assets of TV Guide, reviews aggregator Metacritic and others from media company Red Ventures LLC, adding to a string of publishing deals in recent years. Fandom, whose parent company is backed by private-equity firm TPG Inc., operates an online forum for pop-culture buffs with user-generated content spanning videogames, movies, television, comic books and other topics.
Red Ventures, which started as a digital marketing company, has attracted serious investments from private equity firms. Its location has helped obscure what is perhaps the biggest digital publisher in America, a 4,500-employee juggernaut that says it has roughly $2 billion in annual revenues, a conservative valuation earlier this year of more than $11 billion, and more readers, as measured by Comscore, than any media brand you’ve ever heard of — an average of 751 million visits a month.
ViacomCBS Inc. is close to selling CNET Media Group to Red Ventures LLC, according to people familiar with the matter, as the entertainment giant sheds parts of its business to focus on video streaming. Red Ventures, a media and technology company, is expected to pay about $500 million to acquire the network of websites, which includes CNET, GameSpot and ZDNet, the people said.
