Jay Penske’s Media Takeover Takes its Next Step With a Major Investment in Vox Media

Jay Penske has quietly gobbled up dozens of entertainment publications over the years. Today, the media executive has a foothold in nearly every corner of the industry, from music (Penske Media Corporation owns Billboard, Rolling Stone, Vibe) to Hollywood (The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Deadline, IndieWire, TVLine, Gold Derby) to art (ARTnews, Art in America, Artforum) and fashion (Women’s Wear Daily). PMC has also gotten into live events, including a controlling stake in Austin’s South by Southwest festival. On Monday, Penske’s spree continued with a $100 million investment in Vox Media. “As a result of the investment, Penske Media will own about 20 percent of Vox Media, making it the largest shareholder of the company,” the New York Times reported. Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff said in a reported note to employees that the two companies would “continue to operate separately” with “editorial and business independence,” while adding they would partner commercially. “The Penske Media and Vox Media alliance will further cement both companies as leaders in modern media and take advantage of new opportunities at scale,” Penske said in a statement. 

Vox Media, which owns editorial brands like New York Magazine, Vox, The Verge, and Eater, has itself been in acquisition mode in recent years. Last year, Vox Media bought Group Nine Media. home to brands like Thrillist and NowThis. Bankoff said in a statement that PMC’s investment “will allow Vox Media to continue scaling its existing brands and operations, while providing resources for future acquisitions.” But the reported terms of the deal values Vox at “just half of what the company was worth when NBCUniversal invested back in 2015,” when a $200 million funding round valued Vox at around $1 billion, Axios notes. That reportedly $500 million markdown comes as Vox Media, like many other media organizations, grapples with fallen ad revenue. Vox Media laid off about seven percent of its workforce last month. 

The company may be looking to offload on a larger scale: “In addition to raising funds, Vox Media has met with other media companies to discuss potential acquisitions or sales of some of its media properties,” according to the New York Times. Penske, meanwhile, shows no sign of slowing down, with a PMC subsidiary acquiring Dick Clark Productions, a live entertainment production company, just last month.  

Penske, who will join the board of directors at Vox as a result of the deal, is something of an enigma, so it’s hard to predict where he’ll turn his attention next. The 44-year-old billionaire scion “avoids red carpet events, almost never gives interviews and has no social media footprint,” as the Times’ Katie Rosman wrote last year, in a piece where Penske was described by Stephen Galloway, a former THR executive editor, as “the Rupert Murdoch of entertainment publications.” 

PMC, with all of its trade publications, “has become a prime landing spot for the tens of millions spent annually on Oscars and Emmys advertising,” according to Rosman. Back in 2018, just after PMC had acquired a 51 percent stake in Rolling Stone, a media executive who’d spent time with Penske told my colleague Joe Pompeo that Penske, being a rich kid with a self-made father, was “going to work harder to prove he earned this than anyone else in this situation” and “also seems like he has a lot more money in his favor. He runs his titles for profitability. I think if he plays his cards right, he can go from a B player to an A player.”