Online Review (D)
The media company under analysis is 2929 Entertainment LP. The reason I chose to take a further look at this specific media company is because, as I have explained before, I am a huge basketball fan. There is no other person in the NBA with his hands in so many different places as Mark Cuban. 2929 Entertainment is partially owned by Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team, and worth a mere $2.9 billion…tough life, huh?
Cuban went into business with fellow Indiana University alum, Todd Wagner, an individual who shares the same interests as Cuban. As history shows, Cuban and Wagner know they can make money together. With interests in college basketball and webcasting, equipped with just a single server and ISDN line, Audionet became Broadcast.com in 1998. By 1999, Broadcast.com had grown to 330 employees and annual revenues near $100 million. During the Dot-com Boom, Broadcast.com was acquired by Yahoo! for $5.9 billion in Yahoo! stock.
Together, they have established a vertically-integrated media and entertainment company with holdings that cover all aspects of the entertainment pipeline: from development and production to distribution and exhibition, spanning film, TV and home entertainment with a specialized niche in digital content.
2929 Entertainment produces films in the $10 – $40 million budget range for wide release. Notable releases include George Clooney’s GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK, a co-production with Participant Productions and Section Eight that received six Academy Award nominations including Best Picture; AKEELAH AND THE BEE, a co-production with Lions Gate, starring Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett, TURISTAS and BLACK CHRISTMAS. Other films include WHAT JUST HAPPENED, directed by Barry Levinson and starring Robert De Niro, and James Gray’s WE OWN THE NIGHT, starring Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix. The company is also responsible for the updated version of the television show Star Search.
Productions aside, the most intriguing part of this company is that Wagner and Cuban are utilizing several of these vertically integrated companies to experiment with a “day-and-date” model in which films will be released simultaneously across theatrical, television and home video platforms, thus collapsing the traditional release windows and giving consumers a choice of how, when and where they wish to see a movie.
This media group will be under constant analysis, just as Mark Cuban is relentlessly scrutinized in and out of the office. His critics can watch him on the radar, but will only find a smart business man with the Midas Touch, as he now is a chairman of HDNet, the first high-definition satellite television network.
