The Hollywood sign in Los Angeles.
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J. Michael Cline, a financial executive who founded the ticketing company Fandango, died Tuesday after falling from a New York City hotel high-rise. He was 64.
New York police said The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday that officers responded to The Kimberly Hotel on East 50th Street at 10:19 a.m. Tuesday in response to 911 calls. “Upon arrival, officers found an unconscious and unresponsive male with injuries consistent with a fall from a high position,” the NYPD statement continued. “The investigation is ongoing.”
EMS pronounced the man, later identified as Cline, dead. His cause of death was not immediately known, although there have been several reports that he committed suicide.
Cline, who earned his bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and an MBA from Harvard Business School, founded Fandango, a movie ticketing service, in 2000. He stayed with the company for more than a decade, which was acquired by Comcast in 2007, before leaving in 2011. Fandango is now owned by NBCUniversal and Warner Bros.
He also founded several other companies, including R1 RCM, Accolade, Insureon, Everspring and Accumen, and was a founding managing partner of Accretive, LLC. Before Accretive, Cline was a general partner at General Atlantic and prior to that was an associate at McKinsey & Company.
According to this report, Cline was also executive chairman of the investment firm Juxtapose at the time.
LinkedIn and chairman of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
He is survived by his wife, Pamela B. Cline, and their six children.
THR has contacted Fandango for comment.