Apple Reportedly Paid $485 Million USD for Texture, Which Was Partly-Owned by Rogers

According to the New York Post, Apple’s price paid for digital magazine service, Texture, worked out to “at least” $485 million USD:

The sale price of $485 million included a $100 million up-front payment to four publishers who teamed up to launch Texture — Condé Nast, Meredith and Hearst and Rogers in Canada — plus their venture backer, KKR.

The Post writes these four publishers received a minimum of $145 million USD for the first year, with a minimum of $240 million for the subsequent second and third years, for a total of $485 million USD, or $646 million Canadian dollars.

Texture was partly owned by Rogers Media, so if the money was equally split between all four partners, the Canadian company could have walked away with just over $121 million USD, or a cool $161 million Canadian.



Apple acquired Texture just over a year ago for an undisclosed sum, but now that number appears to have surfaced. Rogers originally launched the service under the name Next Issue Canada in the fall of 2015, before it was rebranded to Texture in 2016.

The Texture acquisition will play a major role in Apple News+, the iPhone maker’s digital news subscription service, which includes hundreds of magazines, plus some digital articles from The Toronto Star, for $12.99 CAD per month.

Apple announced in late March the Texture service will be shut down on May 28, 2019.

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