After two months of intense hypothesis, the comics enterprise lastly has some reassurance that the bankrupt Diamond Comedian Distributors is not going to merely shutter. As a substitute, it’s slated to be acquired by Alliance Leisure—an organization that started in music retail in 1990 earlier than increasing into wholesale. Following a decade of profitable mergers and acquisitions, Alliance now has its fingers in a handful of different companies that embody the distribution of music, motion pictures, video video games, collectibles, and different leisure merchandise.

Alliance submitted the successful bid for all Diamond property—that are presently being offered via a court-supervised chapter course of, and nonetheless topic to approval by the U.S. Chapter Courtroom for the District of Maryland—earlier this week. These property embody Diamond Comedian Distributors U.S., Alliance Sport Distributors, Diamond Choose Toys & Collectibles, and Collectible Grading Authority, which, Alliance stated in a launch, attain greater than 5,000 retail storefronts, ranging in dimension from mom-and-pop comics and sport outlets to massive field shops and e-tail giants.

“With their legacy of unique titles, deep retail relationships, and powerful presence in comics, tabletop video games, and collectible merchandise, these companies are extremely complementary to our current distribution and success mannequin,” stated Alliance CEO Jeff Walker in a press release. “This transaction will place Alliance to ship long-term worth by bringing collectively a few of the most iconic fan-driven manufacturers on the planet with the trade’s best and scalable distribution platform.”

Regardless of Alliance’s lengthy historical past within the leisure enterprise, it’s a brand new participant within the comics panorama. And with the acquisition, it has entered into an more and more sophisticated realm: distribution of printed matter within the U.S. Over the previous a number of years, Diamond, the one-time undisputed king of comics distribution to comics outlets, has seen a sharp rise in competitors from upstarts together with Lunar Distribution, which now distributes for each DC Comics and Picture Comics.

Established commerce guide publishers together with Penguin Random Home and Simon & Schuster have additionally damaged into distributing to the direct market along with the standard books channel. Through its subsidiary Diamond Ebook Distributors, Diamond additionally operates within the books channel—an area presently going through its personal fair proportion of distribution points.

Since Diamond introduced its chapter, issues have solely gotten worse for the distributor. Picture Comics, the third largest writer of comics within the direct market, ended its wholesaler relationship with Diamond simply days after the chapter submitting. Mad Cave Studios, Huge Publishing, Vault Comics, and others additionally introduced partnerships with Lunar shortly thereafter. The sport of distribution musical chairs continues, however one factor is definite: the exclusivity that Diamond as soon as boasted within the direct market distribution sector is gone without end.

Then there’s the matter of Diamond’s excellent money owed to collectors. These embody Penguin Random Home, to which it owes $9.2 million; Disney Client Merchandise, which it owes $1.7 million; Lunar, which Diamond owes $500,000; and such different publishers as Simon & Schuster, Viz Media, and Wizards of the Coast, amongst others. Whether or not they’ll obtain any of the cash they’re owed by Diamond from Alliance following the acquisition stays to be seen.

In its launch, Alliance famous that it intends to finance the acquisition “via an modification to its current $120 million revolving credit score facility, which it expects to extend to $160 million” and to shut in April, topic to closing chapter courtroom approval and customary closing circumstances. The corporate was additionally pretty conservative in its estimates over the monetary benefits of the acquisition, predicting simply over $200 million in income and over $10 million in EBITDA (earnings earlier than curiosity, taxation, depreciation, and amortization) in fiscal 12 months 2026. In its monetary report for the second quarter of its fiscal 12 months 2025, ended December 21, 2024, the publicly held Alliance reported gross sales of $393.7 million and internet earnings of $7.1 million.