Nine Entertainment (ASX:NEC) handed Pedestrian Group to Vinyl Group (ASX:VNL) for "nominal consideration" after burning $49 million on the youth publisher over 10 years. No cash, no scrip, no earnout. Just an exit.
Nine paid $9.3 million in 2015 for 60% of Pedestrian, then another $39.3 million in 2018 to buy out the rest. The business was valued at $100 million at peak. Now it changes hands for effectively zero.
The deal follows a pattern: Nine has been shedding assets as its market cap fell from $4 billion to $1.18 billion over seven years. Domain, ACM regional print, radio stations, regional TV network. All gone. Pedestrian is the latest piece off the balance sheet.
For sales professionals watching the digital media space, this is the third major media asset shuffle in recent months. The broader context: advertising budgets are consolidating around fewer platforms, and youth-focused publishers are struggling to convert audience into sustainable revenue.
Pedestrian's sales org size and current revenue are not publicly disclosed. What is known: the publisher went through multiple restructures, including a 2024 round that saw CEO Matt Rowley exit alongside "multiple redundancies." Licensed titles like Lifehacker, Kotaku, Gizmodo, Vice, and Refinery29 were dropped. The Web3-focused site The Chainsaw launched in 2022 and went quiet by 2023.
Vinyl Group, run by WiseTech founder Richard White, is picking up what remains. The company did not disclose integration plans or whether Pedestrian's current sales team stays intact.
Worth noting: this is not a startup layoff story in the traditional sense. It is a legacy media company walking away from a digital experiment that did not deliver expected returns. But the pattern is familiar: asset sales, headcount cuts, and sales teams left to navigate the uncertainty.
For AEs and sales leaders in digital media, the signal is clear. Non-core assets inside larger groups are getting reviewed. If your publisher is not driving clear revenue or strategic value, expect movement.