Fandango's Vudu Deal and the Digital Media Marketplace
Blu-ray discs may be the dominant form of physical home media in the movie and TV world, but they aren't enjoying quite the same kind of run that their DVD predecessors did. In fact, DVD sales actually still outpace Blu-ray sales, and sales of both formats combined fell by nearly half from 2014 to 2015. Today, many customers turn to alternatives that don't require them to own physical copies in any format. Amazon's (NASDAQ: AMZN) Amazon Video, Apple's iTunes, Alphabet's Google Play Video, and other digital media marketplaces offer digital sales and rentals of movies and TV shows, and they've been very successful. Home entertainment revenue is actually up despite the plunge in sales of physical media, because digital marketplaces have more than made up the difference.
Tech companies aren't the only ones competing in this space, though. Walmart (NYSE: WMT) bought digital marketplace Vudu in 2010. And Comcast's (NASDAQ: CMCSA) Fandango is also in this space with a digital video rental and purchase marketplace called FandangoNow. Though the tech companies have some advantages, at least one of their competitors is working hard to catch up. Fandango announced last week that it will acquire Walmart's Vudu, effectively neutralizing a threat to FandangoNow and consolidating the resistance to the big tech's major marketplaces.
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Source Fool.com
