Redbox Leaves Behind 24k Unusable DVD Kiosks
Walgreens is reportedly stuck paying $184k USD per month to power their machines.
Redbox is officially over. Now, retailers that once offered their movie rental services are left wondering what to do with the giant machines parked outside their stores.
Over the summer, the parent company of Redbox, Chicken Soup for the Soul, shifted its filing from bankruptcy filing from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7, meaning it would be liquidated. The company also left behind hundreds of millions in debt.
Retailers now bear the responsibility of figuring out what to do with the machines. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, former Redbox finance executive Brian Rady said that it will likely cost retailers $500 USD a piece to remove the kiosks. Some of the machines are even embedded in the concrete, making removal an even costlier operation for stores like Walmart, Walgreens and CVS.
There are an estimated 24,000 now-defunct Redbox machines sitting outside stores, per WSJ. Some are hard-wired to a store’s electricity.
The publication reported that Walgreens is still paying $184,000 USD a month to continue to power the machines – even though you can’t actually rent a movie, the machines are wired to the store’s greater power supply.
