NBCUniversal’s Fandango division has officially acquired Walmart’s digital movie and TV library and streaming service VUDU.
Founded in 2004 and snatched up by Walmart in 2010, the streaming service offers over 10,000 free movie and TV titles along with rental or purchase of an estimated 150,000 titles, including new releases.
Though not as big as Amazon and Apple’s iTunes on the rental/sell-through VOD front, Vudu is currently available on more than 100 million living room devices while the mobile app has more than 14 million downloads. It’s also often praised for using higher bit rates than other competitors.
Fandango currently operates its own digital marketplace, FandangoNOW, which has 60 million monthly visitors and contains more than 100,000 movies and TV shows as of December 2019. Fandango is now trying to scale in order to compete with Amazon and iTunes rather than SVOD services.
The purchase comes as Comcast and NBCUniversal roll out the high-profile SVOD service Peacock, and Fox Corp has closed its deal to purchase the ad-supported Tubi. For now, Vudu is not planning to be shut down and users will continue to have access to their libraries.
Source: Deadline
