A day after acquiring Business Insider, Germany’s leading digital publisher Axel Springer will acquire a stake in the New York City-based Thrillist Media Group (TMG), the company announced today.
TMG is a digital media company and lifestyle destination for millennial men, and the investment marks Axel Springer’s “strategy to broaden its global reach, increase its English-language offerings and expand its commitment to innovative digital media content.”
According the official statement, once the deal is completed, it will make Axel Springer the largest outside investor in TMG. Financials were not disclosed.
“The investment in Thrillist is a further step we are taking to expand our global footprint as a digital publisher, especially in English-language markets,” Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer SE, said. “Thrillist has become a first choice, particularly among millennial men. We see strong further potential and are looking forward to close cooperation with Ben, Adam and the whole Thrillist team.”
TMG also consists of the men’s lifestyle brand, Thrillist, with a focus on food, drink and travel. In 2003, the outlet began as an email newsletter in New York, which later expanded to Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and the rest of the world. It’s brother sites include Supercompressor and TMG’s e-commerce business, JackThreads.
The deal to acquire TMG comes a day after Axel Springer bought an 88 percent stake in Business Insider for $343 million.
Axel Springer already owned 9 percent of the digital news site run by Henry Blodget, so the deal bumps its ownership stake up to 97 percent. The deal values BI at $390 million.
Thrillist Media Group was founded by Ben Lerer, CEO, and Adam Rich, Editor-in-Chief, in 2005 and reaches 15 million monthly unique visitors to its website and over 80 million a month across digital, social and mobile platforms. Thrillist has editions in more than 35 cities in the United States and Europe.
The investment will enable “TMG expand into new, targeted content verticals, broaden its video and social resources, aide in the expansion of its experiential events team, continue the development of its proprietary data and technology platform, Pinnacle, and further its newly formed branded content creation division, The CoLab,” the company said in the press release.
The transaction is expected to occur in early October, while JackThreads is not part of the deal.