On-demand movie and TV service FandangoNOW has merged with video streaming service Vudu, which will become Roku's official movie and TV store
Last year, movie ticketing and discovery business Fandango, a division of NBCUniversal, bought the on-demand video streaming service Vudu from Walmart …
Context & Ripple Effects
Fandango’s 2020 acquisition of Vudu from Walmart followed an earlier effort to assemble movie-discovery assets, including Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster. The combination now turns those separate Fandango video brands into a single storefront tied to Roku.
Vudu already had a free, ad-supported viewing offering under Walmart; Roku had also established that viewers could buy on-demand video directly on its TVs. Making Vudu the official store concentrates that transactional path on the device platform.
First-order effects
- FandangoNOW is folded into Vudu, leaving Roku users with Vudu as the platform’s official destination for movie and TV purchases or rentals.
- NBCUniversal’s Fandango consolidates the Vudu business it acquired from Walmart into Roku’s TV interface, rather than maintaining two consumer video brands.
Second-order effects
- Walmart loses Vudu as a distinct consumer-video property, while Roku gains a defined movie-store partner for its device audience.
- Other on-demand video sellers on Roku must compete against a store with official platform status and Vudu’s existing free ad-supported catalog.
Third-order effects
- The deal points to connected-TV platforms becoming the primary gatekeepers for transactional video discovery, with media owners supplying the storefront brands.
- If official-store arrangements proliferate, movie retailers’ leverage will increasingly depend on distribution terms with device platforms rather than standalone consumer brands.
The trend: Connected-TV platforms are consolidating video discovery, free viewing, and paid transactions around preferred storefront partners.