J. Michael Cline, who founded the online ticket marketplace Fandango, has died at the age of 64.
According to the New York Post, Cline was fatally injured after jumping from the 20th floor of a luxury high-rise hotel in New York City on Tuesday. He fell several stories before landing on a third-floor courtyard, where he was pronounced dead by medical responders.
Cline’s identity was not revealed until the Post published a follow-up story late Wednesday afternoon. The story said Cline “left an apparent suicide note before jumping,” according to unnamed sources.
Cline co-founded Fandango in the early 2000s, building the company into one of the cornerstone online marketplaces for movie tickets. At Fandango, Cline was instrumental in securing lucrative deals with traditional movie chains like Cinemark and Regal, which agreed to sell tickets through the platform.
Fandango was acquired by Comcast in 2007, which continues to hold a 75 percent controlling stake in the business. (Warner Bros Discovery owns 25 percent of Fandango.) Cline severed ties with Fandango around the same time and later moved to Accretive, which provides funding to start-up companies.
Under Comcast’s control, Fandango continues to sell movie tickets, but has also branched out into other areas, including streaming media. The Fandango name was recently integrated into Comcast’s other streaming movie platform, Vudu, which is now called “Fandango at Home.”
