VIce Media had been built on a wobbly house of financial cards for years, but the final blow that sent the company into bankruptcy came when one of its foreign partners failed to make a key payment at the beginning of the year. The partner, Greece’s Antenna Group, had been engaged for months in talks to buy the struggling Brooklyn-based media company, but in early January didn’t send a much-needed $34 million quarterly check as part of a long-standing content licensing deal.
The following month, Antenna said it was terminating its $130 million-a-year arrangement, plunging Vice into financial turmoil at a time when it had already begun defaulting on its debt payments, according to filings made in bankruptcy court. The months-long sales talks with Antenna stalled late last year as Vice missed certain revenue targets, but why Antenna walked away from the long-standing content deal wasn’t entirely clear. A spokesman for Antenna had no immediate comment. The missed payment in January sent Vice on a mad scramble for cash just to keep the lights on, marking a dramatic swing in fortune for the once ballyhooed digital media darling that had been valued at as much as $5.7 bill …
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