The Arena Group (MVEN) has signed an agreement to acquire AMG/Parade, a premium multimedia content company with lifestyle, celebrity, food, health & wellness, sports, and outdoor verticals. Its brands include Parade Media, which reaches more than 54 million domestic consumers each month in digital and print, along with AMG/Parade Sports and other lifestyle and outdoor properties.
“AMG/Parade’s properties bring massive reach across print, digital and video that will be the cornerstone of Arena’s new Lifestyle and Entertainment vertical and further bolster our Sports offerings,” said The Arena Group CEO Ross Levinsohn. “Parade has been an iconic media brand for 80 years – I read it as a kid in my Sunday paper and always anticipated the annual Parade High School All-American Teams. Today, through innovation and perseverance, AMG/Parade continues to deliver robust content experiences to millions of consumers every day across multiple platforms. Their content and partnerships with newspaper publishers around the country speaks to the trust and value in their brands.”
The closing of the acquisition is subject to completion of due diligence and execution of formal transaction documents.
The Arena Group Launches a Lifestyle and Entertainment Vertical
The acquisition of AMG/Parade Media Group jumpstarts a new Lifestyle and Entertainment vertical for The Arena Group, while simultaneously adding to the company’s Sports vertical, which in November entered the top five of all sports properties and reached more than 64.4 million digital unique visitors (according to Comscore).
“We are extremely excited about the opportunity to be part of The Arena Group. The digital technology, data management, content, products and services that Ross Levinsohn and his team bring to the marketplace will allow us to build on our tremendous digital growth and print footprint, and bring new products and value to our audience, advertisers and newspaper partners,” said AMG/Parade Chuck Allen.
AMG/Parade creates and distributes elevated content across digital, video and print platforms, with a combined monthly reach of 257 million across print, 119 million on digital and 250 million through video. Parade leverages relationships with 1,000+ publisher partners in local markets to provide engaging content to small towns and major cities and build audiences across platforms, from food and family to sports and entertainment.
The acquisition is expected to be completed in the first quarter of this year. Under the terms of the agreement, The Arena Group will acquire 100% of the issued and outstanding equity interests of AMG/Parade for an anticipated purchase price of $16 million in cash and equity.
The Arena Group Has Been Growing Quickly
The acquisition of AMG/Parade comes on the heels of rapid growth for The Arena Group over the past 15 months across all key categories, including:
- The company expects to report record revenues for 2021 of more than $180 million of revenue, representing 41% year-over-year growth;
- Gross profit margin for the trailing four quarters ending September 30, 2021 nearly tripled to 35% from 12% in the comparable period ended September 30, 2020;
- The company completed, integrated, and has operated The Spun since the Company acquired it in June 2021, and has grown revenue 5-fold, and traffic to the sports site since its acquisition has doubled to more than 36 million users unique visitors per month as of November 2021, according to Comscore.
- November was the largest audience month in Sports Illustrated Media Group history with over 64 million unique visitors, according to the most recently available Comscore monthly report. That’s an increase of more than 237% as compared to November 2020.
- In November, The Arena Group, as a whole, entered the Comscore Top 50 most visited properties in the U.S. for the first time – up from number 94 one year ago with a 79% increase.
- The Street.com, the company’s finance vertical, announced new editorial and subscription product leadership in October.
In addition, on January 11, 2022, the company announced that it had filed its S1 with the SEC and plans to list its stock on the New York Stock Exchange under The Arena Group name using the anticipated ticker symbol “AREN.”
