5 thoughts on MJ Biz Daily, the Wall Street Journal of Weed that sold for $ 120 million in an all-cash deal

News broke today that shook the online cannabis world when industry leader and loyal MJ Biz Daily sold non-cannabis company Emerald X, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Emerald Holding, a New York-based business-to-business event, was sold to media company for $ 120 million in cash plus potential earnouts. The deal was essentially structured around 5 times the sales for the high-ranking website and event and exhibition brand. Emerald stock is up nearly 4% on news of the acquisition.

Interestingly, a cannabis company doesn’t buy up MJ BIZ for internet traffic, Emerald X is a trade show specialist and also runs trade shows like Surf Expo and Pizza Expo. It may be easy to tell that another cannabis website has been taken off the board, which is true, but this seems like a nice addition to the live events giant that Emerald X is fast becoming.

Hervé Sedky, President and CEO of Emerald, said the deal fits in with Emerald’s strategic plans.

“MJBiz’s leading event and content portfolio combined with their 365 day engagement platform – which connects the entire cannabis supply chain – will diversify our joint product offering, improve our growth profile and enable us to serve our customers even more in the long term Value to offer. Term, ”said Sedky.

Some initial questions and thoughts:

As Deb Borchardt of the Green Market Report points out, what happens to journalism and the website when Emerald X is much more interested in the live event and conference?

This is a big bet that COVID will be in the last 3 innings of its two year term rather than the first 3 innings. Nobody knows for sure if COVID is at the end of its story and if we will be good for public events and travel in 12 months, or if we are just starting a decade-long series of COVID spikes and variations that will restrict international travel and live Events until 2030. This may be a case where Emerald X, if guessed correctly, will buy little at live events and reap the rewards when COVID subsides.

I hope we can all visit Chris Walsh’s new island next to Richard Branson’s little sandbar in the sun.

Did the launch of MJ Unpacked, a competing marijuana industry show that coincided with MJ BIZ, have anything to do with sales? Was it time to get out before 5 or 10 competing shows showed up in Las Vegas in the same 3 days to steal your thunder, or did MJ Unpacked’s success have nothing to do with sales? Is Jorge Gage, founder of MJ Unpacked, excited about the news of the sale or is it bad news because a professional event coordinator company is now in charge of the show and has a long track record of running trade shows and events? Time will tell with COVID and other MJ shows in Vegas.

The fact that one of the larger 5 to 7 cannabis websites may happen to have a new home means that another traffic-based cannabis website is now being taken off the board for a future roll-up, IPO, or sale. The list of high domain ranking websites is shrinking as cannabis companies prepare for margin compression and online sales in the future. Fighting over a click is much cheaper than fighting over space on the billboard.

MORE ABOUT MJ BIZ, READ THIS …

5 things I learned at MJ BIZ 2021 if you don’t go!

OR..

CHRIS WALSH, CEO OF MJ BIZ DAILY, TALKS WITH PRO CANNABIS MEDIA!