IrishCentral, the New York-based news and entertainment website, has been bought by a consortium led by an entrepreneur who helped build Broadway.com, the theatre information and ticket website, in a deal worth about $3 million (€2.7 million).

Publisher Niall O’Dowd has sold the popular Irish-American website to Liam Lynch (39), a New York-based venture capitalist and investor in digital companies, and a number of Irish technology and media entrepreneur.

Mr O’Dowd will retain a small shareholding and continue to write for the website – which he founded in 2009 – as managing editor under a three-year contract.

Mr Lynch hopes to double the monthly unique viewers to IrishCentral from three million over the next two to three years. Mr Lynch’s minority co-investors are Seamus McAteer, who was involved with Millennial Media and Shane Naughton, who has invested in NewsWhip and Mike Brewster.

The website, which is profitable, has seven staff in Manhattan. Mr O'Dowd's Irish Voice newspaper and Irish America magazine are not part of the transaction. His backers in the website – Wall Street investors Dennis Fitzgerald and Dennis Kelleher, and Bluff Point Associates, the Connecticut-based private equity firm – have been bought out.

‘Strong partner’

“I am 63-years-old and I very much want to see this site grow and expand after I’m gone, and I needed a very strong partner to make that happen,” said Mr O’Dowd. “This is exactly the kind of partner we needed: a young, dynamic businessman with a great track record.”

Mr Lynch, a board member of Co-operation Ireland and investor in Irish digital company LikeCharity, said he was attracted by IrishCentral’s strong advertisers such as Guinness, Aer Lingus, CIÉ Tours and Tourism Ireland, and the potential to sell to an Irish-American audience.

A third-generation Irish- American, Mr Lynch is from New Jersey. His father Edmund has worked for the Lawyers Alliance for Justice in Ireland, a group involved in the Northern Ireland Peace Process.