Weather Company sells digital assets
August 24, 2023
By Chris Forrester
The Weather Company, which owns The Weather Channel, has announced it is selling its digital assets to Private Equity investors.
IBM is the current owner of The Weather Channel and is selling the channel’s digital spin-off services. IBM has owned The Weather Channel since 2016. The digital elements are being acquired by Francisco Partners. IBM reportedly no longer sees the digital services as part of its core products.
Prior to IBM, The Weather Company had been owned by a number of private equity investment firms, including The Blackstone Group and Bain Capital, along with Comcast’s NBCUniversal. That group of companies acquired the Weather brands in 2008 from Landmark Communications in a deal with a reported price tag at the time of $3.5 billion.
Note that the channel’s digital assets are separate from the TV brand that is The Westher Channel. Those digital assets include the Weather Channel app and the flagship Weather.com site, that are being acquired by Francisco Partners.
The Weather Channel itself was sold by Blackstone, Bain and NBCUniversal to media mogul Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios in 2018 for a reported $300 million.
The channel’s website is among the most visited sites in the US, and ranks at the top of the science and education category and totalled more than 1.3 billion visits in July alone.