🍿 Who is the Rupert Murdoch of entertainment publications?

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Whats up! Welcome to Wouters blog. It’s Wednesday! That means i’m going to be covering:

• 💰 A Media Business Breakdown

Today we’re covering Penske Media. You might not have heard of them but they are media behemoths. They’re the Rupert Murdoch of entertainment publications. Penske (PMC) have >40 publications and they reach 1 in 2 American households, claiming to have over 412M Monthly Active Users.

Its owner, Jay Penske, is an enigmatic yet incredibly influential figure. He has been buying media businesses in the film, TV, art, music, fashion, beauty, business, news and real estate fields like a madman. 

He “avoids red carpet events, almost never gives interviews and has no social media footprint” (Rosman, NYT, 03/22).

He has been called the ‘Rupert Murdoch of entertainment publications’ because he owns a near-monopoly of the Hollywood news trades.

Let’s dive in!

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BREAKDOWN
Acquisitions Anonymous? PMC’s buying spree…

PMC first acquisition was Deadline Hollywood (daily online site covering Hollywood operated by legendary blogger Nikky Finke) in 2009

Since then they’ve bought dozens of media brands. The ones worth going over are: (and heads up, these are basically all the biggest and baddest names in the game you know. these brands are all incredibly well known)

Acquisition of the Hollywood Reporter and Billboard 

In a move that sparked antitrust concerns from the DOJ, PMC signed a $225M deal in 2020 to acquire 80% of Media Rights Capital, the parent company of the Hollywood Reporter and Billboard.

Variety

With the help of a loan, Jay bought Variety in 2012 for about $25M, less than half of the $60M paid when it previously sold in 1987. 

• “Jay Penske came in and saved this business,” said Dea Lawrence, the chief operating and marketing officer of Variety. “He is a hero to the publishing world.”

• In 2022, Variety notched the strongest revenues in its 117-year history

Rolling Stone

In 2017, Jay bought Jann Wenner’s (co-founder of Rolling Stone) 51% stake in Rolling Stone; 2 years later he acquired the remaining 49%

• Rolling Stone and Variety now employ more staffers than ever

Vox Media

Jay bought 20% of Vox Media for $100M, making him the largest Vox shareholder

• Jay came in at a valuation of half of what the company was worth when NBCUniversal invested back in 2015 - when a $200M funding round valued Vox at around $1B

(see more here → All PMC brands)

Who the f*ck is Jay Penske?

When Jay does an acquisition, he personally meets with every employee at a newly acquired business for 30 minutes each. He held about 200 meetings just with the staff of SXSW. Listen to what people say about him..

Now ironically Jay comes from a rich family which ironically gives him a huge chip on his shoulder. 

Jay grew up as the youngest son of motorsports icon and billionaire Roger Penske (still alive).

• Roger Penske was a a one time professional racecar driver, known as the Captain

• He owns the Penske Corporation which owns a transportation fleet of >360K trucks and vans with the family name in bold black lettering on the trucks: PENSKE (you’ve probably seen them around)

• He also owns the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (home of the Indy 500), IndyCar and various championship-winning Penske Racing teams.

• In 2019, Roger was awarded the Medal of Freedom by Trump (you can see Jay with his wife in the back of the oval office)

Back to Jay … 

He has allegedly taken no family money to fund his business. Instead, he has raised money from other places, including $200M from the Saudis.

Apparently he wants to work harder than anyone to prove himself, and show the world he is not a spoiled kid.

An example of his competitiveness: In his prep school, he scored so many points as a lacrosse player that his jersey was retired (he got expelled from another prep school for misbehaving)

Rafat Ali (CEO of Skift) said: “I think he has a chip on his shoulder and wants to prove himself - he was hustling back then not to be known as Penske — to prove himself not to the world, but to his family.”

A media executive who'd spent time with Jay said that, being a rich kid with a self-made father, meant Jay was, “going to work harder to prove he earned this than anyone else in this situation”.

I like to believe nothing is a coincidence

Jay Penske, at the young age of 24, made a savvy business move by purchasing and later reselling the domain mail.com (for a pretty big undisclosed profit)

• How cool is this? Literally the best domain to land unintentional traffic. 

• Such a clear talent prediction for young people.

He is also a serious reader:

• The writer A. Scott Berg, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Charles Lindbergh, was a friend and mentor to Jay Penske, he said about Jay “One thing I knew from the night I met him in the summer of 2002 was that he was a serious bibliophile.”

• He had 28,000 volumes, half of which he sold in an antiquarian bookstore he opened in LA named Dragon Books (now closed)

Controversies

He is a playboy, not only was he named one of the 10 best-dressed men in the world by Vanity Fair in 2010, he has dated socialites including Jordana Brewster (Mia Toretto in Fast & Furious) and Devon Aoki (Benihana heiress). Now, he’s married to a former Victoria’s Secret model.

• He wanted to build a single-family mansion on a seven lot property over the oldest African American church in Venice, LA.

• Arrested (charges weren’t pressed) for drunkenly pissing on a woman’s shoes

• There is a ‘Eat Predators Daily’ with 8K views shitting on Jay for 22 mins  😞

That’s it for today! Come back Friday to see who Chris Anderson is. The man behind ‘TED’ and how he uses it to leverage power over media.

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Don’t forget

Don’t forget to come back for Fridays newsletter where I will cover:

• The weekly newsletter media breakdown!