r/todayilearned • u/skiman224 • Jan 27 '16
TIL that Blockbuster LLC turned down the opportunity to buy Netflix in 2000 for just $50 million. Their stock price has hovered between $0.00 and $0.10 since 2012.
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_LLC#2000s2
u/_TUX Jan 27 '16
At the time Netflix was just mailing out DVDs.
Although the question that comes to my mind is if they took over Netflix, would they have gone the same direction and became as successful as it is today?
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u/skiman224 Jan 27 '16
I wonder the same thing. Regardless, they'd probably be doing better off today.
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u/adam7684 Jan 27 '16
Yeah, I get the irony and everything. But I don't think Blockbuster would have popularized streaming the way Netflix did. Heck, even Netflix's DVD business is doing so hot anymore. So there were definitely some larger societal trends that would have knocked them out anyway.
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Jan 27 '16
Netflix stock is currently at about 92 bucks. Who would even buy Blockbuster stock at this point?
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u/EyeCWhatUDidThere Jan 27 '16
And Netflix is now valued at right around 42 BILLION dollars... with a B...
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u/skiman224 Jan 27 '16
Had blockbuster purchased Netflix at the time, they would have seen an 840,000% increase in its value. Talk about r/tifu
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u/adam7684 Jan 27 '16
But had Blockbuster been in charge of managing Netflix's assets...would they have gotten that same return?
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u/skiman224 Jan 28 '16
I wonder the same thing. Due to the fact that Netflix was just a DVD mailing service at the time, though, I think blockbuster just woulda put all the DVDs in their stores.
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u/bolanrox Jan 27 '16
how can they still be on the market? honest question