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Comcast’s announcement that it is acquiring online movie ticket site Fandango was surprising at first blush but once you look under the surface it makes a lot of sense—especially when you consider it alongside Comcast.net and the plans, also announced today, for a new site built around Comcast’s innovative video player The Fan. For one, its profitability for the last several years and its prospects—advertising is already 50 percent of revenue and growing while ticket sales also are growing—fit with the investment strategy for Comcast Interactive Media. Also, Fandango wasn’t being shopped around; Comcast went shopping for it, no doubt adding to the appeal. Fandango has a strong management team that will stay in place and it should mesh with Fancast.com, slated for a summer launch, while getting a boost from Comcast.net. While remaining standalone sites with their own urls, all three should benefit from the serious cross promotion being planned—at least, that the plan.
When I spoke with Amy Banse, president of Comcast Interactive Media, about the deal and how it fits in, she reminded me of CIM’s mission: “We’re generally charged with creating, building, and acquiring online entertainment and information properties.” CIM is separate from Comcast’s ISP business.

Fancast: Planning for Fancast.com, a site that not only would help people find programming across multiple platforms but would deliver some via its own player, began soon after the unit was formed. “Fancast is a one-stop shop,” Banse explained.  The user will type in whatever he or she is looking for—a program, a director, an actor, etc.— and will get search results that all the info about the show plus where it’s available on TV, VOD, online, the movies. For instance, type in “Pirates of the Caribbean” now and you might get where and when the first two are playing on cable, how to get them on DVD or VOD; next month, the movie listings for #3 would show up, too. In addition, it would provide info about the show, the actors, promotional clips and video. The next step would be to provide access—E-mail reminder? download if possible? Link to where to buy the DVD? Etc.

Why Fandango?: CIM was in the process of building Fancast and Fandango came up. Banse explained: “It’s already a great online entertainment brand. It has some nice traffic, which we think is very complementary or consistent with traffic on Comcast.net or that we want to do on Fancast. ... It was a nice acquisition for us both from the perspective of a standalone business and from the synergistic fit with the rest of what we were trying to accomplish.”

Business models: Fancast will be ad-and-sponsor supported. No details from Comcast, but given the interest in delivering content through the video player I’d expect revenue sharing with content providers also to play a role. I’d also expect e-commerce as part of the equation through merchandise and movie ticket referrals. 

Price: Banse wasn’t going there and estimates vary wildly. What we do know: the amount is not material and does not have to be reported by Comcast. As for the price or even the range, we’re still working on it.

Rafat adds: The company has at least $50 million plus pumped into it in venture capital: $15 million in investments from the exhibitors and $15 million from Aecretive Technology Partners and General Atlantic Partners in the first round; $5 million in a second round from the previous investors (2001); $15.3 million from Technology Crossover Ventures (2003); and it looks like another late round last year, according to an SEC filing. There could have been more, though. On the sale price, THR quotes an analyst (Jeff Wlodarczak of Wachova Securities) saying the price could be around $200 million. We are still on the fence on this one.

Comcast has done one of its biggest Internet acquisition to date: it has acquired Fandango, the online movie tickets sales and info site. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter.
The company also announced that it plans to launch Fancast.com, a new site that will enable consumers to “search, discover, manage and enjoy their entertainment experience across many devices and channels, including television, computers, DVDs and wireless services”.
Both Fandango and Fancast.com will be run by Comcast Interactive Media, the digital media arm of Comcast which was formed last year. Fandango, based here in LA, will continue to be run by CEO Chuck Davis.
Some more details:
-- Fandango has between 4 and 5 million unique visitors each month.
-- Investors included Accretive Technology Partners, Technology Crossover Ventures, and theater chains.
-- It was started in 2000 by seven of the 10 largest movie exhibitors in the U.S. including AMC Theatres, Carmike Cinemas and Cinemark Theatres.
-- Fandango will provide key commerce capabilities for CIM sites and will be an additional source of traffic and revenue. 
-- CIM sites, including Comcast.net and Fancast.com, will prominently feature Fandango.
-- This is ominously worded:  “Comcast will leverage its experience as the nation’s largest buyer of video content, serving nearly 25 million cable customers and 11.5 million broadband customers, to expand its existing video-centric websites and create a new online destination, Fancast.com.”
-- Fancast.com: Will launch this summer, where people can browse and search TV and movie content, while “managing their viewing experience across multiple devices”.
More details in release.

A deal with NBCU’s Universal Pictures International Entertainment and NBCU International Television Distribution gives Deutsche Telekom’s T-com “first” status when it comes to digital download-to-own major films in Germany. As Variety explains, the deal for the “legal and secure” download-to-own option also includes renewal of VOD rights to a “wide array’ of NBCU content via T-Home IPTV and T-Online. The service is slated for 2Q07 launch.
-- Most titles will be available day-and-date of DVD release. 
-- Purchases include two Windows Media files for viewing on PC or enabled handheld and one burn to DVD. (It’s not clear whether DVD playback is limited.)
Update: Finally saw the actual release and it says the DVD can be played as normal. Also, T-Com’s download-to-own service will offer the anime cult series Saber Raider and several short-subject packages. No prices are mentioned.

One of the two competing hi-def DVD standards is finding more favor with European movie distributors than the other, FT reports. Some 35 titles are available in Toshiba’s HD-DVD format compared with just 10 on Sony’s Blu-Ray discs. Studio Canal and Pathé (France), Filmax and DeAPlaneta (Spain), and Imagion and Nixbu (Germany) have each pledged their support to the Toshiba format. Studio Canal’s Rodolphe Buet: “I have met much more commitment from partners involved with HD-DVD than Blu-Ray.” Even the European vice-chair of the Blu-Ray Disc Association conceded Sony has concentrated on the U.S. and has considered it too early to work with European studios. Release of Sony’s Playstation 3, critical in establishing a beachhead for Blu-Ray in the living room, was delayed by nearly four months in Europe; whether this will prove fatal remains to be seen. In the U.S., Blu-Ray player sales have outstripped those of HD-DVD players by two to one, but the independent studios which have supported HD-DVD enjoy greater market share in Europe than in America (up to 50 percent).

Microsoft has give the Xbox360 an upgrade, called Xbox360 Elite, with a 120-GB hard drive and a souped up HD video connection, in a bid to broaden the appeal of its popular console beyond video games. The earlier version has 20GB storage. The new Xbox 360 Elite will sell for $479.99. Consumers who already own the $399.99 20-gigabyte model will be able to buy a snap-on 120-gigabyte hard drive for $179.99, reports AP.
Also, importantly for the content industry, it has added an HDMI connection, which sends HD content from the console to the TV without losing picture or sound quality, while also helping prevent piracy, the story says.
On the content side, it has announced new partners: New Line is the latest studio to join Microsoft’s Xbox Live video download service, while existing partner Paramount is going HD, reports Variety. Paramount has been in the service since Nov, but going HD for the first time. Warner Bros. has offered pics in HD since the service launched, while Lionsgate joined in January with HD.
A&E is also joining this week with digital downloads of its TV shows, including “Dog the Bounty Hunter.” Shows from CBS, MTV Networks, WB and Paramount TV are already on Xbox Live, with many available in HD. Action sports company TotalVid and Japanese anime distrib ADV Films have also signed onto the service.
Gizmodo: People are spending about 40% of their time using the Xbox 360 for a lot of these entertainment-type experiences like music, movies and TV.

John Antioco, Blockbuster’s chairman and CEO for the past decade, has agreed to leave the movie rental company by the end of this year, the company said. Release. Blockbuster has struggled with competition from Netflix and the like as well as the transition to digital; as we just reported, an acquisition of MovieLink may be announced soon. The move follows a compromise with Blockbuster’s board of directors over his 2006 bonus. Though he said he’d met the performance goals qualifying him for a $7.7 million bonus, Antioco has accepted a $3.1 million amount instead. That amount is still higher than the $2.3 million initially offered by the board, according to the WSJ. The board, led by Carl Icahn, apparently felt Antioco’s desired bonus was too extravagant.

Hoping to stanch further revenue slides, video rental chain Movie Gallery plans to start an online DVD rental service later this year after a long stretch of customer defections to Netflix and Blockbuster, according to Reuters. After releasing fairly disappointing earnings results on Friday, Movie Gallery, which also owns rental franchises Hollywood Video and Game Crazy, has initiated a series of moves to regain its footing. 
For 4Q, Movie Gallery’s total revenues were $663.3 million, a slight drop of 1.9 percent from $676.4 million in 4Q05. Same-store total revenues for the quarter fell 2.9 percent year-over-year. But the most difficult financial problem Movie Gallery had been wrestling with all year was its $1.1 billion in debt stemming from its purchase of Hollywood Video two years ago. It recently refinanced its senior secured credit facility to save more than $6 million of interest payments annually.
Making a greater attempt to meet customers demand for more digital services, as we reported earlier this month, Movie Gallery paid under $10 million for VOD service Moviebeam, which was spun off from Disney last year. In its earnings release, Movie Gallery touched on the purchase as part of a series of moves it plans to make similar investments to get itself back on track. As if it needed further proof of the need to offer more digital services, Reuters adds that the company learned from a customer survey that about 10 percent of Hollywood Video customers and about 2 percent of Movie Gallery customers were renting new releases from its stores, but finding older films through the online DVD rental services.
Related:
-- Movie Gallery Acquires Heavily Funded MovieBeam For Less Than $10 Million

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