Advaya Buys Comscore Movies for $70M, Revives Rentrak Name
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- Advaya Capital completed its purchase of Comscore Movies for about $70 million in cash and is renaming the business back to Rentrak, the brand it carried before Comscore's 2016 acquisition.
- Comscore Movies tracks transaction-level data from roughly 34,000 theaters and more than 200,000 screens across 70-plus countries, covering about 95% of the global box office and nearly 100% of the North American box office.
- Chris Aronson, formerly head of domestic distribution at Paramount and founder of Rentrak Theatrical, is joining the board alongside Arturo Guillén, who served as EVP and Global Managing Director of Comscore Movies.
- Advaya managing partner Anant Gupta, a former Nielsen board member, outlined three investment priorities: deepening the dataset in underpenetrated international markets, deploying AI to automate data collection and build predictive analytics, and developing products for the theatrical-streaming relationship.
- Comscore CEO Jon Carpenter called the unit "a cornerstone of the global theatrical industry for nearly 50 years" and said Advaya brings "deep expertise in data and media platforms."
- The deal lands as the theatrical market rebounds: wide releases hit 112 in 2025, up 19% from 2024, and the domestic box office is tracking toward $9.6 billion in 2026, the biggest year since 2019.
Why it matters: The roughly $70 million sale hands the industry's dominant box office data set to a PE buyer with media-measurement credentials (Gupta's Nielsen background) and theatrical veterans (Aronson) on the board, with explicit plans to layer AI and predictive analytics onto a dataset that already covers 95% of global ticket sales. The timing catches the theatrical market mid-recovery, with 2025 wide releases up 19% and 2026 tracking to become the strongest domestic year since 2019.
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