A longtime newsstand staple is going by the wayside: Dotdash, a unit of Barry Diller’s IAC holding company, has acquired wedding and bridal property Brides from Condé Nast and will shut down the print edition of the 85-year-old title.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The deal news comes just two days after Condé Nast sold Golf Digest to Discovery in a deal reported to be worth $30 million-$35 million.
The six-times-yearly Brides print magazine will be discontinued after the August/September 2019 issue in the U.S. and the September/October issue in the U.K.
Dotdash is bringing on eight Brides editorial employees as part of the transaction, which a rep said is the majority of the existing editorial team. That includes Lisa Gooder, executive director of Brides at Condé Nast who has been at the magazine since 2011, will lead Brides at Dotdash as GM and will continue to oversee Brides’ strategy and content.
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Dotdash said it will set a digital focus for the future of Brides, whose competitors include The Knot and WeddingWire, with content and resources to guide readers from a proposal through engagement, to their wedding and honeymoon. In March 2019, Brides had 3.6 million unique visitors (doubling in the last four years), according to comScore, while its print readership has declined 4% since 2014 to hover around 300,000, the New York Times reported.
“Adding Brides to our portfolio of brands gives us a powerful platform to take on the wedding space and extends our ability to reach young women at key moments in their lives,” Neil Vogel, CEO of Dotdash, said in a statement.
In the past two years, Condé Nast has been rejiggering its brand portfolio has print revenues have declined, shuttering print versions of Glamour, Teen Vogue and Self. The company last month named Roger Lynch, formerly chief exec of Pandora and head of Sling TV, as its first global CEO, looks to mount a digital-led turnaround.
Brides joins Dotdash’s stable of brands aimed at millennial women include MyDomaine, The Spruce, Byrdie, The Balance, and Verywell. It claims to reach over 100 million monthly users. The division was originally called About.com, a site aggregating how-to articles on hundreds of various topics, which IAC acquired from The New York Times Co. in 2012 for $300 million. (The Times has bought About.com for $410 million in 2005.) IAC rebranded About.com as Dotdash in 2017.
In the deal, which closed Wednesday (May 15), Greenhill & Co. served as financial adviser to Condé Nast and Hughes Hubbard & Reed was legal adviser.