The rumours circulating IGN Entertainment’s sale have turned out to be true, as j2 Global subsidiary Ziff Davis has bought the website from news giant News Corporation.
The amount IGN sold for remains undisclosed, but The Wall Street Journal reports the News Corp hoping to get at least $100 million for the deal. This price doesn’t even come close to the $650 million News Corp originally paid for IGN and it’s network of accompanying websites back in 2005.
What is clear is that not only did J2 Global get IGN for a steal, but also got its 600 advertisers and 53 million global monthly visitors, that will double the amount of revenue brought in by j2’s digital media business.With Ziff Davis’ combined properties PCMAG.com, Geek.com, Toolbox.com along with IGN’s assets IGN.com, UGO.com, 1UP.com and Askmen.com, the group is now one of largest publishers to reach tech, videogame and entertainment fans.
After a failed attempt at spinning off IGN as a separate company, rumours of the sale of IGN have been around since October 2011, and has been up for auction in the last six months. j2 Global’s move to purchase IGN shows its desire to want to become a bigger player in the digital media world. Before buying Ziff Davis and it’s plethora of entertainment sites, j2 was known as a business cloud service company. Now, with a wide variety of entertainment and geek sites already under its belt, it’s not surprising that IGN got picked up along the way.
“This is a transformative deal for our digital media business,” Hemi Zucker, CEO of j2 Global said in a press release. “By combining two of the most storied organizations in tech, gaming and entertainment, we have created a very powerful company capable of producing and delivering content in all forms to an audience that marketers highly value.”
Although IGN has been sold two times, it still holds true that the site is still one of the leaders in gaming and entertainment news. With all sorts of sectors of the videogame industry struggling to stay afloat IGN changing hands isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As j2 states in its press release, Ziff Davis’ strength in data analytics will influence IGN’s marketing, ultimately more effectively reaching its demographic audience (males 18 to 34), IGN said.
With that positive quote from Ziff, it doesn’t seem like IGN will see any lay-offs in the upcoming future, as the site still does make money. Especially now, IGN needs a strong presence to help it move along (as times for any industry are kind of in the dumps), having someone new take over could benefit IGN and its sister sites. Plus most fans of the site will barley notice that IGN and it’s other sites have changed hands, as it doesn’t seem like there will be any major changes.
