Finalizing its earlier reported investments in the digital publishing house Vox Media, entertainment giant NBCUniversal has closed in on a sum of $200 million, at a pre-money valuation of $850 million in a deal announced earlier today. The new investment will also see the two companies collaborating on various domains of programming, advertising and technology.
The deal now puts Vox Media, which owns popular digital media brands such as SB Nation, The Verge – covering technology and Vox.com at about $1 billion.
Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, is also busy preparing an investment of about $200 million into BuzzFeed, which has lately ventured into the domain of journalism. The deal would put the digital media company at an evaluation of $1.5 billion. The deal is likely to be made official sometime later this week.
The deals represents NBCUniversal’s recognition of the digital media prowess. With the advent of the smartphones, users are increasingly shifting towards digital news and services, though not completely forgetting the idiot box.
To put this into figures, in the United States Vox had close to 54 million unique visitors in the month of June. The majority of those visitors – about 41 percent – are 18 to 34 years old, according to the data from comScore. BuzzFeed, too attracts the similar age group to its online services and registered about 80 million unique visitors for the same month of in the United States.
Vox Media had earlier acquired the NBCUniversal backed Revere Digital, the owner of popular tech business news website, <Re/Code>.
