Fandango at HomeCopied

In February 2024 Fandango announced that Vudu, its digital movie store, would be renamed Fandango at Home. Variety reported that the Vudu name was being put out to pasture 20 years after it was founded as a pioneering digital movie service, and that Vudu, part of NBCUniversal's Fandango division, began notifying customers by email.

The Verge noted the history. Vudu had operated for many years under Walmart before Fandango bought it in 2020, and Fandango had shut down its own FandangoNOW service at the time, so wanting its name back on the product was not a surprise; it had already placed Fandango beneath Vudu in the app's logo. The company said customers would keep the same films, shows, deals and bundles, and that their libraries would stay where they were.

The Verge also pointed out that Vudu had become a favourite of home theatre enthusiasts for its high-quality streams and disc-to-digital program, and that even with the new name, the link between Fandango's ticketing business and Fandango at Home was not exactly seamless.

That is the weakness of the name. Fandango means buying a cinema seat; at Home is a descriptive tag stuck on to explain a different product. It is clear, but it is not a brand anyone will love the way some loved Vudu.

Variety filled in the history. Vudu launched in 2007 with its own internet set-top box and a proprietary HDX format, was bought by Walmart in 2010 and by Fandango in 2020, and by now offered more than 200,000 titles to rent or buy. Fandango's senior VP of OTT and streaming, Cameron Douglas, said the aim was to align products under one brand, reinforcing Fandango as the destination for entertainment at home and at the theatre, and the FAQ promised nothing in customers' libraries would change. Two name changes in three years is a lot, but folding the service into the brand people already use to buy cinema tickets finally makes sense.

The business logic is easier to defend. One name across tickets and rentals lets Fandango market a single relationship with film fans, and the parent's name carries more weight than an odd four-letter word with enthusiast appeal.