Outdoor Channel Agrees To Sell Itself To Owner Of The Sportsman Channel

The deal will consolidate two of the leading media companies serving hunters and others who enjoy life in the wild. InterMedia Outdoors — which owns The Sportsman Channel and 15 magazines including Guns & Ammo and Petersen’s Hunting — secured $150M in financing for the deal. Outdoor Channel Holdings investors will receive a 25 cent a share special dividend, and then have a choice: They can take $8 for each of their shares or swap them for stock in InterMedia Outdoor Holdings, which expects to be listed on NASDAQ. Outdoor Channel shares are up 3.9% to $7.47 following the announcement. The deal is expected to close early next year; private equity firm InterMedia Partners will own 67.6% of the combined entity, and current Outdoor Channel shareholders will end up with 32.4%. Outdoor Channel CEO Tom Hornish will keep the top job in the new arrangement. The combination “will allow us to better serve the consumers, distributors and advertisers in this robust marketplace,” he says. Outdoor Channel reaches 38.1M pay TV households while The Sportsman Channel reaches 30.1M.