Vox Media, one of the preeminent editorial roll-ups of the last decade, is expected to unwind parts of its portfolio in the coming months via a combination of sales, spin-offs, and divestitures, according to five people familiar with the company and its finances.
The house of brands, which was assembled through a series of acquisitions since its founding in 2011, now appears poised to disassemble in a similarly incremental fashion.
Since the pandemic, the value of Vox Media has been shrinking faster than its constituent elements can be optimized, according to three of the people.
That reality spurred chief executive Jim Bankoff to begin exploring potential exit strategies for the company several years ago. The $100 million investment Vox Media received from Penske Media Company in 2023, widely interpreted inside the company as a prelude to acquisition rather than a vote of confidence, has only accelerated the expectation.
“The value that these businesses once held is shrinking,” said one person close to the business. “It’s harder to compete now than ever. It doesn’t feel like it is getting more valuable.”
Vox Media declined to comment on the record.
The Vox Media hierarchy
Across its portfolio, Vox Media generates revenues of between $400 million and $500 million, according to three people with visibility into its finances.
Two sources pegged the figure as closer to $400 million, while another said $500 million is plausible only with podcasts folded in. Either way, the sum is meaningfully lower than the roughly $600 million figure that The Information reported in 2023.
One of the primary catalysts driving Vox Media to sell is the rapid decline in traffic across its portfolio. According to one source, readership to its lifestyle brands has fallen roughly 50%. That drop arrived "faster than anyone expected," they added.
This downward pressure has long motivated efforts to sell, but finding a single suitor for the entire portfolio, whose coverage ranges from sports to dining to technology, has proven next to impossible. Few strategic buyers would benefit from absorbing such a heterogenous mix of titles.
Meanwhile, financial buyers like private equity firms, which are struggling with broader macroeconomic factors and increasingly uninterested in the meager returns of digital media, have grown far more selective in their shopping.
In response, Vox Media has adopted an unbundled approach, opting to shop its house of brands as a series of standalone titles to sensible owners.
The most visible evidence of this decision was the announcement, made in January, that the company had split its sales operation into two independent organizations: one for its podcast network, one for its publishing business.
The move clearly telegraphed that the podcast business, called the Vox Media Podcast Network, was being decoupled from the broader Vox Media business. According to Puck, last year the VMPN generated $60 million in revenue and more than $20 million in profit, making it an appealing business with ample room for growth.
As such, the company has shopped the VMPN around, with interested buyers including Versant, as The New York Times reported, and Netflix, according to a person familiar with the efforts, but no deal has yet been struck.
Regardless, any effort to sell the podcast network will have to contend with a thicket of unwelcome logistics.
In many cases, for instance, Vox Media does not employ the talent behind the podcasts, acting instead as a sales representative for the shows. As a result, one source suggested, rather than buy the entire network outright, an interested party could presumably wait until the contract governing their desired show expired, then outbid Vox Media for it.
Similarly, several popular podcast franchises are attached to brands within the editorial portfolio, such as the show Decoder with Nilay Patel, who is also the editor in chief of The Verge. Separating podcasts from their editorial platforms makes sense in theory, although in practice could prove challenging.
Likewise, selling the publishing division of the Vox Media portfolio presents a separate set of challenges, as the individual brands vary in their commercial health and prospects.
At the top of the Vox Media hierarchy is SB Nation, a network of sports blogs that brings in between $50 million and $100 million in revenue, according to a person familiar with its finances. Its lean model—the editorial is largely produced by contractors—has kept it operating profitably despite upheaval in broader traffic patterns.
Second on the totem pole is New York Magazine, which has more than 400,000 paying subscribers and a wealth of cultural capital. The media brand generates more revenue than SB Nation, but its thin margins make it a less attractive asset, according to three sources. The magazine did more than $100 million in revenue last year but drew a profit of only around $6 million, per Puck.
The Verge and Eater generate the third and fourth-most revenue in the portfolio, trading places depending on the year, according to five people familiar with the brands.
The commercial health of The Verge is largely tied to the advertising budget of the technology industry, which in recent years has prioritized cost-cutting to free up cash to bankroll its investments in artificial intelligence.
Likewise, Eater produces significant top-line revenue but carries thin margins because its cities-based reporting model and video production are expensive to maintain, according to two of the people. It had a banner year in 2024, but pressure from tariffs led to a substantial decline in revenue according to a person familiar with the brand.
While these four brands represent the premium arm of the Vox Media portfolio, the remaining dot-com assets of Vox, The Dodo, Popsugar, and Thrilist make up its value division.
Vox, although the namesake of the company, has struggled to keep pace with its legacy peers.
Its news orientation and historical dependence on social traffic have proven to be commercial headwinds, according to two people familiar with the company. To compensate, it has pivoted its content strategy, launching a paywall and expanding its newsletter offerings in a bid to capitalize on its brand equity. In the Vox Media hierarchy, it now falls somewhere between the premium set and the Group Nine assets.
In hindsight, Vox Media’s purchase of Group Nine marked a severe misstep, according to all five people. The tie-up occurred at the peak of the pandemic bubble, meaning Vox Media traded its stock for a group of editorial assets whose traffic soon cratered.
In doing so, it brought over the brands Thrillist, The Dodo, NowThis, and Popsugar, all of which have dropped precipitously in value since the tie-up. Since joining Vox Media, Thrillist has been folded into Eater and Popsugar has endured a series of rebrands.
“The Group Nine acquisition didn't work out the way that anyone wanted it to,” said one source.
As standalone titles, the former Group Nine titles will likely be difficult to sell. But Vox Media has had success in rehoming some of its smaller brands.
In 2023, it spun NowThis off into nonprofit ownership, and in 2024, it sold the gaming brand Polygon to Valnet for around $20 million, according to two people familiar with the deal, the details of which have not been previously reported.
What Vox Media built over a decade took dozens of deals to assemble. Taking it apart, it turns out, may take nearly as many.
