The Arena Group Acquires Fexy Studios

The sports, finance and lifestyle publisher The Arena Group, which houses editorial titles including Sports Illustrated, The Street and Parade, has acquired Fexy Studios, a digital video and content production studio with a focus on food media, in a stock-and-cash transaction. With the deal, the publisher will meet rising demand from marketers for premium video inventory, ultimately growing Arena Group's video ad revenue. The financial details weren't shared. As part of the agreement, core Fexy Studios leadership, including chief executive Cliff Sharples and head of partnerships and sales Bruce Hunter, will join The Arena Group. Relish, a recipe aggregator product owned by Fexy Studios, is not included in the deal and will continue as a standalone product along with its staff. The acquisition provides The Arena Group with a number of new assets, including two video franchises and a library of 15,000 videos, which strengthen its lifestyle division and usher the publisher into the world of multichannel video, said president of media Rob Barrett. “We have been very successful in growing our web audience, but the one thing we have not had is a true, integrated media model, in which we produce web programming, digital video, connected TV and linear programming,” Barrett said. “That is something we gain with this acquisition.” Platforms Are Pivoting to Video. Publishers, Again, Follow Suit The company generated $180 million in revenue in the first nine months of 2022, according to its September earnings report. Digital and print advertising streams were responsible for approximately 41% and 15% of that total revenue, respectively. The remainder comes from digital (8.8%) and print (26%) subscriptions, as well as other lines of business (7.2%). New video inventory Prompted by the rise of vertical video and the transition from linear to streaming, audiences have flocked to video formats, and advertisers have increasingly sought to align themselves with the channels. By acquiring Fexy Studios, The Arena Group can better meet this rising demand, Barrett said. The tie-up includes two video franchises produced by Fexy Studios, A Moveable Feast and Roadfood, both distributed on linear, digital and CTV channels and exist as standalone websites. The series, along with the expertise and relationships of Sharples and Hunter, pushes the publisher immediately into multichannel video sales. “We kept seeing demand for not only web inventory, but social inventory—specifically social video inventory—and connected television,” he said. “And when you can do it, sometimes linear. These integrated multichannel sales are really an expansion strategy for us and for many media companies.” WMX Expands Into CTV With Roku Partnership, Launching 3 FAST Channels Parade will become a portal for lifestyle and food content A newly acquired in-house video production division will continue to produce existing franchises and, eventually, create video content for other titles within its portfolio, including its Men’s Journal and adventure properties. It will focus at first on expanding the food and health offerings at Parade, whose lifestyle content has historically included recipes. Despite receiving little investment in recent years, traffic to Parade’s food content makes up nearly half of its audience, according to Barrett. The Arena Group discontinued the Parade print product in November, but it still has commercial relationships with nearly 1,000 local publishers. The publisher also plans to turn the Roadfood website into a platform for food entrepreneurs and influencers across the country. This model mirrors Sports Illustrated, where roughly 170 local team sites supply SI.com with content, and the publisher uses that scale to secure lucrative advertising deals for itself and its partners. “This was a direction we were moving in already,” Barrett said, “but we think the Fexy team has the skills to accelerate the strategy.” The tie-up is the latest in a series of acquisitions from the publicly traded Arena Group, which has raised a total of $129 million, according to Crunchbase. In June 2021, it acquired sports publisher The Spun, and in April 2022, it finalized its purchase of Parade Media for $16 million. In December, it acquired the digital assets of Men’s Journal and a host of active lifestyle sites from accelerate360, including the enthusiast titles Surfer and Powder. Across its portfolio, The Arena Group reached 100 million visitors in October 2022, according to Comscore.

Merger & Acquisition News

The Arena Group Acquires Fexy Studios, Expanding Its Video Footprint

The purchase reflects marketer demand for premium video inventory

Mark Stenberg

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