Antenna Group Emerges as Bidder for Vice Media

The Greek broadcaster Antenna is exploring an acquisition of Vice Media, in keeping with three individuals acquainted with the matter who spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate non-public negotiations. The deal would consummate a longstanding enterprise relationship between the 2 firms.

Antenna isn’t the one potential purchaser to have expressed curiosity in Vice, which rode a wave of optimism in digital media to an eye-popping $5.7 billion valuation in 2017 earlier than battling broader headwinds dealing with the sector. It isn’t assured that Antenna will purchase Vice, nor that there will likely be a deal in any respect.

A spokesman for Antenna declined to remark.

A cope with Antenna would shut a chapter for Vice, which started its life within the Nineties as an edgy journal primarily based in Montreal. Over the subsequent 20 years, Vice and its co-founder Shane Smith persuaded blue-chip advertisers and buyers to affix Vice’s quest to turn into a global media firm with ambitions to tackle established gamers in publishing and leisure.

A type of backers was Antenna Group, a media firm that in 2014 began a three way partnership with Vice in Greece. The corporate renewed and expanded its cope with Vice in 2019 and has teamed as much as begin a global information enterprise, Vice World Information.

Vice has centered on diversifying its income streams in recent times, increasing its Vice Studio enterprise; its advert company, Advantage; and its international information gathering division. These models have helped the corporate enhance its monetary outcomes and obtain profitability throughout some quarters final 12 months, an individual acquainted with the matter stated.

On Thursday, Vice Media introduced that it had garnered 33 Emmy nominations within the information and documentary class.

The Info reported earlier that Vice had employed advisers to discover a sale of its studio enterprise. CNBC reported that Vice Media was exploring a sale of its total enterprise, and The Wall Road Journal reported that Group Black, a media firm centered on Black possession, was exploring a deal for Vice.

Vice, like many digital information firms, final 12 months explored a plan to go public by means of a cope with a particular function acquisition automobile, which had been seen as a neater option to take an organization public than a standard preliminary public providing. However enthusiasm on Wall Road for SPACs waned, partly due to the poor efficiency of most of the firms that used them to go public, and Vice as a substitute raised cash from buyers.

Amongst these buyers had been Antenna, the non-public fairness agency TPG and Lupa Programs, the funding agency of James Murdoch, the son of the media mogul Rupert Murdoch.