Essence in Talks to Buy Refinery29 From Embattled Publisher Vice Media
Vice, which acquired the women’s lifestyle site in 2019 for $400 million, is retrenching under new ownership
Essence Magazine’s parent company is in talks to acquire Vice Media’s women’s lifestyle site Refinery29, a deal that could help the Black-owned media brand expand its digital profile and reach more young women.
The price being discussed couldn’t be learned but Essence would likely pay a fraction of the $400 million Vice paid when it bought Refinery29 in 2019, according to people familiar with the situation.
News of the discussions, which could still fall apart, comes just days after Vice’s largest shareholder, Fortress Investment Group, said it would stop publishing content on the company’s namesake site, Vice.com, and was laying off hundreds of staffers.
Refinery29, founded in 2005, was one of the early digital-media players to gain relevance among millennial women, with revenue generated through ads, events and licensing deals. Vice was drawn to Refinery29 as a way to complement its male-heavy audience and draw in new advertisers.
Refinery29 has struggled with the same challenges as other online publishers, including a volatile ad market and a decline in traffic sourced from Google and social-media sites. Refinery29 saw a decrease in revenue to $30 million last year from around $50 million in 2022, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.
Essence Ventures, which is owned by Richelieu Dennis and is the magazine’s parent, is among the companies marketers are targeting as they try to increase spending on Black-owned media. Adding Refinery29 to its stable would substantially increase the inventory Essence can sell to those advertisers.
Dennis is chairman and co-founder of the Group Black consortium, which aims to help advertisers more efficiently spend greater sums of money with Black-owned media. Group Black in recent years has expressed interest in acquiring various digital publishers, including Vice.
Vice Media was once valued at $5.7 billion and was among the most promising digital-media ventures, but has struggled to stay afloat. Fortress, which took over Vice in bankruptcy last year, is now focusing on its remaining assets, which include its production studio, TV network and ad agency Virtue.