High Times magazine, a counterculture staple for 43 years, has been sold to Los Angeles-based investment firm Oreva Capital in a $70 million deal, according to a Forbes report. Oreva Capital is comprised of 20 investors, including Damian Marley, son of the late Bob Marley, and founded by Adam Levin.
Levin said the magazine’s value, “is in the brand and its identity.”
High Times-hosted events, such as the Cannabis Cup, represent 75 percent of the magazine’s revenue; Levin indicated that the new owners plan on hosting “even more events…like business summits.”
Longtime High Times employee Danny Danko said the deal will allow the publication to “go big and expand” on what the magazine has already been doing.
“I think we’ve always had big ideas at the company, but not everything could be accomplished. We were fairly small without a lot of resources,” Danko said in the report, adding that the new owners know it’s important to make sure that the core audience remains intact. “We’ve always had this underground mentality and grassroots organization, now we have the funding to go out and do bigger things.”
The new company will be called the High Times Holding Company, and Levin will become the chief executive.
“I think most would agree it was not executing business at max potential under the legacy framework established by the founders,” Levin said in a New York Times report. “We are going to build on the strong base they created to bring High Times from the authority in the counterculture movement to a modern media enterprise.”
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