Thursday, March 28

NBCUniversal Invests $200 Million in BuzzFeed

Online media company BuzzFeed, best known for its list-based articles and quizzes, said Comcast Corp’s NBCUniversal had invested an additional USD 200 million in the company.

NBCUniversal last year invested roughly the same amount in BuzzFeed. NBCUniversal parent Comcast has pumped heavily into digital-native companies such as BuzzFeed and Vox Media, partly in an effort to better service existing advertisers.

BuzzFeed, whose content generates 7 billion views each month, will collaborate with NBCUniversal on production and social distribution for NBCUniversal’s Content Studio, the companies said on Monday.

In August, BuzzFeed split itself into news and entertainment divisions amid media companies’ struggle for balance between covering news and politics, and lighter fare like social media, entertainment and lifestyle. LionTree Advisors was BuzzFeed’s financial adviser and Fenwick & West LLP its legal adviser. Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP was NBCUniversal’s legal adviser.