This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Digital
Vodafone in talks to buy Blinkbox
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 1 December 2014
Vodafone has had talks with Tesco about acquiring its streaming platform Blinkbox, according to the Financial Times.
There were rumours back in October that the flagging supermarket giant might look to sell on its streaming content set-up as part of a company-wide review instigated by new CEO Dave Lewis which was likely to propose focusing on core business.
Blinkbox’s video-on-demand service – rather than its music streaming element, which was spun out of what was We7 – will presumably be of more interest to Vodafone, which has ambitions to enter the home broadband and TV services business in the UK. It would be interesting to see whether Vodafone would want to keep the music side of Blinkbox, given its existing and seemingly successful alliance with Spotify.
A source told the FT that only “early discussions” had so far taken place between the tel co and the supermarket firm over Blinkbox. Though given the content-on-demand service is loss making, and Tesco’s aforementioned expected new strategy to focus on its core retail operations, Vodafone could get the streaming business for next to nothing.
