Jeff Zucker has entered a joint venture between RedBird Capital Partners and International Media Investments to create RedBird IMI, an investment vehicle focused on acquiring and investing in global media, entertainment and sports content properties.
The venture is launching with $1 billion in initial invested capital.
“I’ve spent 35 years running media businesses at the intersection of news, sports and entertainment, creating new brands and resurrecting old ones. That experience has given me unparalleled perspective for this unique time in media, and the combination of the RedBird and IMI capital and strategic discipline, combined with my operational experience, will give this joint venture a unique advantage in the current media landscape,” Zucker said in a statement.
Zucker is RedBird IMI’s CEO, having also joined RedBird as an operating partner. Zucker brings more than three decades of leadership experience across news, sports, entertainment and digital innovation to the new venture, most recently serving as the CEO of CNN from 2013 to 2022. He was also the president of Turner Sports from 2019 to 2022. Prior to that, he spent 25 years at NBCUniversal, where he served as the CEO from 2007 to 2011. In 2007, he co-founded the online streaming service Hulu.
“The RedBird IMI joint venture has come together at an important time as the media industry continues to evolve in both content creation and distribution to meet the evolving expectations of consumers globally,” CEO of the Abu Dhabi-based IMI Nart Bouran said in a statement. “Partnering with Jeff Zucker and Gerry Cardinale will enable us to bring tremendous operational, investing and financial expertise to make impactful and transformative investments across the media, entertainment and sports landscapes.”
Cardinale, RedBird founder and managing partner, added, “We are very pleased to partner with IMI to create a long-term, fully capitalized investment vehicle that can own and operate content-focused businesses across the media spectrum in the US and globally. The skill and experience of the combined team will allow us to identify assets that will benefit from the deployment of success-based capital to further scale or diversify, while also enabling the development of new companies competitively advantaged as market and consumer trends continue to evolve. With Jeff as our CEO, this platform will integrate substantial operating expertise with sophisticated financial and investing acumen to deploy transformational capital on a scaled basis.”
