Vox Media, the private company that publishes a range of popular digital publications, announced on Monday that it is purchasing Curbed Network, a private company that publishes Eater, Racked, and Curbed, which cover restaurants, fashion, and real estate, respectively. They will join existing Vox properties such as SB Nation, a network of sports sites; the Verge, a tech platform; and Polygon, a gaming site. According to The New York Times, the sale price is in the range of $20 million to $30 million. The purchase comes on the heels of reports that Vox Media recently raised $34 million in new investment capital.
As Felix Salmon points out, Vox’s purchase of Curbed is unusual in that typically, nascent blog networks tend to be scooped up by established media giants (such as AOL or Time Warner or Disney), rather than by other nascent blog networks. The Vox-Curbed deal, he suggests, could signal a coming wave of consolidation.
