Last Updated on December 28, 2025 by Craig Allen Keefner
Redbox Kiosk News
June 2024 Engadget — Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment is $970 million in debt. Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, which acquired the movie rental service Redbox in 2022, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, Deadline reports. The company recently disclosed net losses of $636.6 million for 2023 in a SEC filing, and Deadline reported just a few days ago that it had suspended medical benefits and missed payroll, leaving employees without their paychecks for a week already. In a message to employees on Saturday, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment said it had applied for a debtor-in-possession loan in an attempt to remedy the situation.
So what about all those locations?
The $375 million deal to acquire Redbox brought with it a ton of debt, and according to The Verge, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment owes money to a slew of retailers, studios, and streaming platforms — including Walmart, Universal and Sony — as well as other creditors.
January 2024 — Redbox, the last bastion of DVD rentals through its ubiquitous storefront kiosks, is selling to Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment for about $375 million in stock and debt. From Quad City Times May 2022
From Barrons: For Redbox, this deal is a financial lifeline. In the company’s 2021 10-K filing, the company warned that “the risks and uncertainties related to the ongoing adverse effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the company’s operating results, together with the company’s recurring operating losses, accumulated deficit and negative working capital, raise substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern.”
In Brief
- Dispensing DVDs at Walgreens/etc will continue
- $50 in Chicken Soup stock + assumption of $321 million in Redbox debt
- Revenues fell last year, by 50%, for Redbox ($288 million)
- Redbox laid off more than 10% of workforce
- Next “shiny thing” for investors is how to gain share in streaming market (netflix, amazon prime, eg)
- Redbox has 7 million kiosk interactions a month
- Redbox shares are trading for about six times the transaction price. Consider Twitter shares trading over $300 while awaiting completion of a deal priced at $54.20. On Friday morning, Redbox was up 10% to $2.95 a share. That’s for a stock that will be converted within three months into the equivalent Chicken Soup stock currently worth around 45 cents. Someone is not doing the math.
Barrons goes on in lengthy article about the specifics of the deal and why it is “so weird”.
The history of Redbox makes this situation even weirder. In 2016, former Redbox parent Outerwall was taken private by Apollo Global Management APO +0.57% ( APO ) for $1.6 billion. In addition to Redbox, Outerwall owned Coinstar kiosks (for cashing in loose change) and the ecoATM electronics-recycling kiosks. Apollo still owns Coinstar, and holds a majority stake in ecoATM. Outerwall, which originally used Coinstar as its corporate name, completed the purchase of Redbox in 2009.
More posts on Redbox and Coinstar
- Redbox Coming Soon! Kiosk Digital Signage(Opens in a new browser tab)
- DVD Kiosk – Redbox Revenue Drops 17% in Q4, as DVD Rentals Plummet(Opens in a new browser tab)
- Outerwall shuts down Redbox kiosks in Canada, beats Q4 earnings expectations – GeekWire(Opens in a new browser tab)
