Playboy is buying adult Web site Rouze.com in a bid to strike a little gold from the younger audience Rouze attracts and hold back a push from Maxim for the same audience.
Playboy.com plans to use equity in its soon-to-be-issued stock to finance the Rouze purchase, says The Spectator, an online news magazine.
Rouze is a six-month-old adult Web site which mixes nude photography with World Wrestling Federation coverage, video game reviews, and commentary, and Playboy.com thinks it can bring the young men's market back to the venerable rabbit hutch, The Spectator says.
Maxim is a print magazine which goes after 18-34 year old men and is stepping up its Internet attack. Playboy, in contrast, is thought to have been losing its edge and concentrating on older, more sophisticated men, such as those who have all but grown up with the magazine created by Hugh Hefner from his kitchen table in 1953.
Hefner's daughter, Christie, who now runs Playboy Enterprises, says the Rouze deal is a chance to expand the entire Playboy franchise, not just the magazine. In fact, Hefner says the better business to be in now is the electronic side.
Keith Blanchard, Maxim's group creative director, sees the deal in another way. "Going about things in a Maxim way is certainly a good business way to follow," he tells The Standard.
Last month, Playboy Enterprises filed to spin off 20 percent interest in its Web unit to raise $50 million in order to expand Playboy.com, The Standard says.
And the e-zine adds the growing competition "speaks volumes" about young men staying vital online with sex as a dominant draw for them - saying $1.4 billion of the $2 billion in paid online content was spent on adult entertainment, with Datamonitor telling the e-zine that could jump to $3.1 billion out of $5.1 billion by 2003.
But it isn't just in the pictures - The Spectator observes Maxim holds the line between mere titillation and outright porn, and Playboy Enterprises seems to be playing that strategy as well. Rouze is expected to cover up much of their bare models when it joins the Playboy operation, with nude content coming in future subscription services.
"Part of the fun of this game is there really is no worthy competition yet," Blanchard tells The Spectator. "I'm sure it will come, but it won't come from the ranks of pornography."
