Earlier today, Verizon and Redbox announced a partnership to launch a streaming music service. Now, Coinstar, Redbox’s parent company, has announced plans to purchase assets NCR, the company who runs the Blockbuster Express kiosks, forming disc rental monolith.
Gary Cohen, the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Consumer Experience at Redbox told Fast Company that, with the addition of the kiosks under the Blockbuster command, Redbox will now have “more locations than McDonald’s and Starbucks combined.”
The deal is rumored to be around the $100 million dollar mark and will include disc inventory and kiosks formerly operated by NCR as well as contracts for the locations at which they are installed. Services to maintain the kiosks and software to run them will also be purchased separately for around $25 million.
“Through this agreement with Redbox, NCR will be better positioned to focus on expanding our business in our targeted industries,” said John Bruno, executive vice president and chief technology officer, NCR. “Additionally, this transaction affords us the opportunity to develop a long-term strategic relationship with Coinstar and partner on delivering new and innovative solutions to the market.”
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So, along with the deal to stream movies in partnership with Verizon, Redbox is entrenching itself in the physical media rental business as well. Redbox’s CFO J. Scott Di Valerio seems to think that physical media will be around for the next ten years or perhaps longer and says that there are places to take it that haven’t been seen.
“Streaming is great–it’s really exciting,” Valerio told Fast Company, “but we’re also looking at how we innovate in this automated retail space.”
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