Fandango Buys Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster Fandango claims the acquisitions will increase its own traffic to 63 million unique visitors per month.
This story originally appeared on Fortune Magazine
Online movie ticketing platform Fandango is adding a couple more names to its portfolio of cinematic sites.
Fandango said Wednesday it is buying movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster from Time Warner's Warner Bros. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, though Warner Bros. will take a minority stake in Fandango as part of the transaction, according to the press release.
As part of the deal, Fandango -- itself owned by Comcast's NBCUniversal -- will have the ability to incorporate Rotten Tomatoes movie reviews, including the site's Tomatometer rating tool, into its ticketing platform. Fandango will also add its ticketing service to the Flixster mobile app, which provides movie information along with reviews from Rotten Tomatoes.
Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes together get 20 million unique visitors per month, and Fandango claims the acquisitions will increase its own traffic to 63 million unique visitors per month. Fandango attracted 1 billion visitors to its website in total last year, while U.S. ticketing increased by 81 percent.
"Our new expanded network will offer unparalleled capabilities for all of our exhibition, studio, and promotional partners to reach a massive entertainment audience with innovative marketing and ticketing solutions that benefit from original content, home entertainment products, "super tickets,' gifts with purchase, and other new promotional opportunities," Fandango president Paul Yanover said in a statement.
Wednesday's announcement marks the latest acquisition for Fandango, which, last month, bought streaming video service M-Go in another sign that the brand's digital network is expanding.