The New York Times Company reportedly eyes $330 million Letterboxd

By Amara Osei

The New York Times Company has reportedly “entered exclusive negotiations” to acquire Letterboxd for $330 million, according to a report published by The New York Times itself. The target is an online movie platform whose user count reached 28 million by April of this year.

The New York Times Company declined to comment on the acquisition when approached by its own newspaper. That leaves the reported talks and $330 million price without company confirmation.

What is Letterboxd?

The New York Times compared Letterboxd, an online platform for movie lovers, with Goodreads for films. The service is free, while a paid subscription provides access to advanced features.

That model gives Letterboxd a broad consumer audience without charging every user for the core product. The report did not disclose the subscription price, paid subscriber count or revenue generated by those upgrades, so its revenue mix remains less clear than its audience scale.

How much has the platform grown?

Letterboxd reported 3 million users in January 2021. By April of this year, the figure had reached 28 million.

More than half of Letterboxd's users are under 35, according to the user figures cited by The New York Times. The newspaper did not provide a further age split, subscription conversion rate or separate count of active users.

Who wanted Letterboxd before The New York Times?

The New York Times also noted that Letterboxd had previously been reported to be seeking a new owner. Its report said film studios A24 and Sony were interested in acquiring the platform, but A24 was “priced out.”

The New York Times account did not disclose what A24 offered or why it was priced out. It also did not say whether Sony remained in contention, though the reported negotiations with The New York Times Company were exclusive.

What does the $330 million price mean?

The proposed price compares with projected Letterboxd earnings of $15 million for this year, according to The New York Times. That estimate amounts to about 4.5% of what The New York Times Company is supposedly offering to buy the company.

The purchase price therefore stands far above the platform's projected earnings for the year. The report did not explain how much of those earnings comes from subscriptions, leaving the valuation's relationship to subscription revenue difficult to assess.

Why is the reporting arrangement unusual?

The New York Times reported on acquisition talks involving its own parent company. Its newspaper sought comment from The New York Times Company, which declined, creating an unusual verification gap around a specific price and exclusivity claim.

The accompanying source commentary said the anonymous tips could have come from inside the company and expressed confidence in the report. That is an editorial assessment, not confirmation from The New York Times Company, though it provides context for an unusually self-referential report.

The report's figures are specific, but the acquisition's status still depends on confirmation from The New York Times Company. Until then, the $330 million figure describes an offer under discussion rather than a completed transaction.

What would make the deal conclusive?

A definitive agreement, a closing date and clearer subscriber economics would replace the reported terms with confirmed deal terms. The New York Times report disclosed none of those details beyond the purchase price and exclusivity status.

If completed, the acquisition would put Letterboxd's 28 million-user audience, with more than half of users under 35, inside The New York Times Company. The strategic test would be whether a free service can produce enough paid subscriptions to justify the reported valuation.

The next decisive disclosures are company confirmation, contract terms and paid-user data. Those details will show whether a $330 million price can be reconciled with $15 million in projected earnings for this year and a still-unquantified subscription base.