Blockbuster was on the very verge of bankruptcy when Dish acquired it back in 2011. However, the acquisition hasn’t helped improve Blockbuster’s prospects in any way. Rather, Dish has been doing away with more and more BlockBuster stores and has now decided to shut down another 300 of them in the coming weeks.
With this move, Dish intends to shut down such BlockBuster stores which are either not performing up to the mark or are about to reach their lease expiry. Once Dish goes forth with the decision, it will be left with a mere 500 BlockBuster stores in the whole of U.S.
Shutting down 300 stores will lay off a lot of employees. To be specific, Dish will be putting 3,000 people on the streets unless it decides to provide them some kind of a compensation package by offering jobs in other divisions of the company.
Back when Dish acquired Blockbuster in a $320 million deal, it had 1,700 Blockbuster stores on its hands. The company was quite hopeful of the acquisition and planned to couple BlockBuster’s offering with its own video offerings. However, before soon, Dish seemed disillusioned of the whole scheme and has since been steadily shedding more and more BlockBuster stores over the months.
In 2012 alone, Dish shut down 650 BlockBuster stores and seems intent to follow the very course during 2013 too. It would seem that BlockBuster has indeed come to the end of line since its product offerings were not repackaged, in time, for the fierce competition in the market.
Courtesy: NASDAQ
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