Tesco Blinkbox Being Shut Down
Tesco is said to be planning to sell off or shut down it expensive Blinkbox video and music streaming service which it bought an 80% stake in three years ago. Tesco

Tesco is planning to sell-off Blinkbox, its loss-making video streaming service, and if a buyer can't be found, it will shut down the service it bought just over three years ago.

The news comes in a report from The Times which says the company's CEO Dave Lewis has already informed senior Blinkbox staff of his decision when he visited the media division's office in London last week.

Tesco acquired an 80% stake in Blinkbox in April 2011, hoping to use the streaming service to bolster sales of its digital entertainment offering. Blinkbox founder Michael Cornish was promoted to group digital director of Tesco in 2013 but he is expected to remain at the company whatever Blinkbox's faith.

Under the stewardship of previous CEO Philip Clarke, Tesco poured hundreds of millions of pounds into the service which offers on-demand video rental. The company, which is the UK's largest retailer, last year launched a music streaming service also under the Blinkbox brand.

Tesco and Blinkbox have found it difficult to compete in a world where Netflix dominates the on-demand video sector and services like Spotify dominate the music streaming market.

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One of the ways Tesco sought to increase the use of Blinkbox was by bundling it with its very successful own-brand Hudl tablet last year.

On Friday, 3 October, the company is widely tipped to launch Hudl 2, an updated version of the Android tablet with better specs but retaining the budget price tag.

It is now unclear if the Blinkbox video and music apps will be pre-installed on the new tablet when it is launched this week.