David Cook ran Cook Data Services, a database company for the Texas oil industry, before opening the first Blockbuster in Dallas on October 19, 1985, with 8,000 VHS and 2,000 Betamax tapes. He walked away from a VideoWorks franchise over its refusal to allow his blue and yellow color scheme, and built a $6 million barcode driven distribution center in Garland, Texas, to tailor each store’s stock. Waste Management co-founder Wayne Huizenga and John Melk bought in at 19 stores in 1987 and applied a McDonald’s style model, opening a new store every 24 hours. Huizenga, wary of video on demand, sold to Viacom for $8.4 billion in 1994.

CEO John Antioco rejected Warner’s DVD revenue share deal in 1997, cheap Walmart DVDs followed, a 2000 streaming venture with Enron collapsed, and Blockbuster passed on buying Netflix for $50 million. It peaked in 2004 with 84,300 employees and over 9,000 stores. Its 2007 Total Access program let mail customers swap discs in stores and alarmed Netflix, but it cost about $2 per exchange. Carl Icahn’s proxy fight pushed out Antioco; successor Jim Keyes ended the program. With $900 million in debt, Blockbuster filed for Chapter 11 in 2010, and Dish Network bought what remained for $320 million in 2011.

• Blockbuster beat Nintendo in a 1989 legal fight over game rentals under the first sale doctrine.
• Its 2005 “no more late fees” campaign charged the full retail price after eight days, and more than 40 states sued.
• Icahn objected to Antioco’s pay of over $51 million in 2004; Antioco left with nearly $25 million in severance.
• In 2008 the company bid for Circuit City before withdrawing the offer.
• The leftover shell, BB Liquidating Inc., surged in the 2021 GameStop frenzy, and the Bend, Oregon store was listed on Airbnb in 2020.