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Media - Thursday, August 9, 2007

"New Site" Raises $100M @ $1B Valuation

The joint venture between NBC Universal and the News Corporation to bring their TV shows and movies onto the Internet has raised $100M from Providence Equity Partners, a media investment firm. Providence gets a 10% stake in the joint venture, reports the NY Times. The Times gets a provocative quote from Todd Dagres, general partner at Spark Capital, a media and entertainment-focused venture capital firm, who said it was a "startlingly rich valuation" for a company that could most likely not be sold or go public, considering NBC and the News Corporation hold large stakes. “It’s a sign of the times when a company that didn’t exist a couple months ago can raise this kind of money,” he said.

While we agree that "New Site" could not be sold, why couldn't it go public. Certainly, there is plenty of precedent for joint ventures that have gone public. Also, it doesn't seem like a particularly rich valuation to us. What would an online video company be worth if it owned just the rights to the Simpsons? That's just one of thousands of valuable properties owned by New Site. And unlike YouTube it likely won't have the legal baggage.

Read - NY Times story