Lance Armstrong Takes Equity Stake In Richard Rosenblatt’s Demand Media at Conceptualist.com, By Sahar Sarid

Lance Armstrong Takes Equity Stake In Richard Rosenblatt’s Demand Media

Published on January 28, 2008 in Domain Names.

Demand Media, the heavily capitalized Santa Monica-based online domain monetization and media company, has made an interesting turn: it has tied up with cycling legend and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong and his foundation, to launch a health-and-wellness site LiveStrong.com. As a result of this deal, Armstrong and his Lance Armstrong Foundation will take a “significant”? equity stake in Demand Media, though the size of the stake was not disclosed. The site will launch in beta next quarter.

Demand Media has raised about $320 million from investors including Oak Investment Partners and Goldman Sachs, and according to WSJ was valued at $1 billion last year when the last investment round happened. The company has about $150 million in annual revenue and operates about 60 sites, besides its other domain activities.

“Live strong”? is Armstrong’s personal mantra as a cancer survivor, and his foundation believes that launching a for-profit site would increase awareness about the foundation and promote its core mission of helping people with cancer. Demand Media will provide the technology and social media features and will keep the ad revenue generated by the commercial site; CEO Richard Rosenblatt said his company will reinvest much of it back into the livestrong property. The foundation also owns Livestrong.org, its main website, and users will be pushed to the commercial site to this non-profit site.

Of course they’ll be in tough competition with tons of other health and wellness websites, both from media companies, product companies in the space, as well as blogs focusing on various sub-sectors.

Updated: The company tells us Demand will invest upwards of $20 million in building out LiveStrong…the deal is a four-year exclusive deal and Demand has perpetual license to the LiveStrong.com domain name.

Lance Armstrong has millions of followers, big name. Great move by Richard Rosenblatt and the Demand Media team.

1 Response to “Lance Armstrong Takes Equity Stake In Richard Rosenblatt’s Demand Media”

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1 Adam
Jan 29th, 2008 at 2:47 pm

my wife is launching her blog soon. . . it’s called LivingWithStrong.com ha!

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When I first saw this I thought you may have a bunch of fitting domains. Still don’t doubt it
Sahar