Dish Network Taking Over 500 Blockbuster Leases

Would you invest any time or money into Blockbuster at this point? It would take a really bold (or really rich...or really bored) person to say "yes," but Dish Network must fit that criteria. The company has just decided to broaden their scope when it comes to Blockbuster, and that apparently means taking over around 500 Blockbuster leases. Dish will soon by BB's parent, and they're agreeing now to take over 500 physical stores as they consider ways to turn things around in a world obsessed with digital downloads.


The report was spotted in Dish's recently filed papers with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court Southern District of New York, coming around a month after Dish won an auction for BB valued at $228m in cash. If everything goes smoothly, that deal should close today, and while Dish is taking over those leases, they aren't making public their plans. Will they be rolled into something else? Sold for scrap? Rebuilt from the ground-up? Who knows, but we still maintain that physical video stores have numbered days.