• by Wayne Friedman , May 28, 2026

Comscore has sold Comscore Movies, its box-office data business, to private equity firm Advaya Capital for $70 million in cash, according to a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The purchase will be rebranded under the new ownership to be known as Rentrak, which operated as a box office/movie data-tracking business for decades and as a TV measurement company before it was sold to Comscore in 2016.

The new owners believe that as the theatrical business rebounds, there will be growth for the entertainment data business, according to reports.

Longtime studio distribution executive Chris Aronson, who most recently was president of domestic distribution for Paramount Pictures, will be a senior executive at the new company. Aronson will work with Arturo Guillen, who was executive vice president and global managing director of Comscore Movies.

The roots of Comscore Movies go back to the mid-1970s, when a company known as Entertainment Data Inc. (EDI) created a centralized system to collect box-office revenue dollars in theaters.

In 1997, EDI was acquired by Nielsen, and became Nielsen EDI.

Rentrak started in the 1980s with the measurement of video-on-demand transactions and then moved into box-office data, helped by film executive Aronson.

Building on its existing ability to measure video-on-demand (VOD), Rentrak moved into TV measurement in 2007 -- buying up set-top-box data from cable and satellite providers including Charter and Dish Network.

In 2009 it started up TV Essentials, providing second-by-second viewing and advertising data, pulled in from millions of set-top boxes.

In 2010, Rentrak bought Nielsen EDI for $15 million and assumed specific liabilities.

In 2016, Comscore merged with Rentrak in a $767 million deal, with the intent to combine Comscore's digital/internet analytics with Rentrak’s TV and film data. Rentrak’s movie business was rebranded as Comscore Movies.