First, the magazine got rid of nude photos.
Now, Playboy might be looking for a new home altogether.
Playboy Enterprises, the parent company of Playboy magazine, is looking into selling the company, the Wall Street Journal first reported Thursday. The Journal noted the company could nab roughly $500 million in a sale.
The potential sale comes just after the first nudity-free issue of the magazine was unveiled earlier this year. But that was just one tactic the company seems to be exploring in a continuing quest to stay relevant in the digital age.
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When Playboy released its no-full-frontal March issue, the rebranded, PG-13-style glossy brought in an influx of new advertisers to the magazine. Yet, the move appeared to cover up what could really be a bid by the company to woo a younger audience of millennial readers.
Playboy has struggled to stay relevant in the digital era of smartphones, social media, and virtual reality porn. The wealth of naked content and porn online (often for free) can make all the old-school excitement of the nude Playboy playmate in a magazine feel…a bit “passé,” as Playboy CEO Scott Flanders put it.
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Playboy may also be looking to other strategies to draw in those younger crowds. The company is said to be considering buying up Arsenic, Business Insider reports. That’s the social media hub where women submit photos for free, recently dubbed the “Playboy for the Snapchat generation,” by Smashd magazine.
ArsenicTV videos fetch hundreds of thousands of views per day across platforms, including Snapchat. On Instagram alone, Arsenic has quickly amassed nearly a million followers.
By comparison, Playboy’s circulation has plummeted to around 800,000 from the whopping 5.6 million readers the magazine drew in 40 years ago.
On top of it all, in additional to the aforementioned financial struggles on the publishing side, the infamous Playboy Mansion also went up for sale earlier this year—complete with live-in magnate Hugh Hefner, who said sale or no sale, he’ll be staying in the $200 million house.
Arsenic and Playboy did not immediately respond to Coins2Day’s request for comment on the potential deals.
