Satirical website that spawned The Mash Report

Satirical news website the Daily Mash, which inspired BBC Two’s The Mash Report, has been sold for £1.2million.

The deal with media company Digitalbox is set to net co-founders Paul Stokes and Neil Rafferty a healthy windfall.

The pair, both former Daily Record journalists in Scotland, set up the site in 2007 when struggling to find work. Inspired by The Onion, they each chipped in £250 to build a website.

In the last financial year parent company Mashed Productions, which is what Digitalbox bought, made a £135,000 profit on £396,000 income. It attracts about 1.8million visitors a month.

Current headlines on the site include ‘ No-Deal Brexit recipes you can make without food', ‘email sent at 3am offers terrifying glimpse into boss’s home life' and ‘woman believes 83 Facebook friends actually give a toss about her birthday’. 

Digitalbox, which also owns the website Entertainment Daily, said its new acquisition is ‘capable of consistently generating high-quality, original humour content which is extremely hard to replicate’ and produces ‘highly viral content of a timeless nature that has a much broader and longer appeal than daily news’.

Rafferty is also one of the writers on the Mash Report.

Published: 8 Feb 2019