Walmart is reportedly looking to sell its Vudu streaming service
1Reported today on The Verge
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Reported today in The Verge.
Walmart is reportedly looking to sell its Vudu streaming service
Walmart is considering a sale of its Vudu video streaming service, according to a new report from The Information. It’s not known how much the company is looking to sell the service for, nor whether it has enlisted bankers to assist with the sale. Walmart purchased Vudu back in 2010 for $100 million.
The Information notes several reasons why Walmart could be looking to sell Vudu now. For starters, the video streaming market is getting increasingly crowded with Apple TV Plus and Disney+ launching next month and HBO Max and NBCUniversal’s Peacock services coming next year. Vudu’s digital rentals and purchases business model has also fallen a bit out of favor in recent years, as all-you-can-eat subscription streaming services have become the norm.
Vudu has always been considered one of the better places to stream a movie, as the service emphasizes video quality and HDR presentation. It was also a central player in UltraViolet, with a disc-to-digital program that let customers add their movie collection to the cloud. Vudu now supports Movies Anywhere as well.
Walmart hasn’t appeared shy about investing in Vudu. Earlier this year, it announced a slate of original content led by a reboot of the 1983 movie Mr. Mom, which premiered last month. Behind the scenes, it’s also reportedly considered offering “shoppable” TV shows and movies, and The Information reported that it even considered launching a subscription streaming service last year. However, sources now say that the amount of investment required to turn Vudu around no longer makes sense for Walmart.
“Over the last nine years, we’ve built Vudu into an incredibly strong and growing business with an installed base of more than 100 million devices across America,” the company said in a statement to The Information, “We’re constantly having and [are] open to conversations with new and existing partners to explore opportunities for continued growth; however, we never share details of those discussions.”