Swedish media company Modern Times Group (MTG) has acquired 51 per cent of Zoomin.TV, the online video entertainment network, content production and advertising sales house. This follows MTG’s announced investments in ESL, and Splay in the last few weeks. MTG’s fast growing digital portfolio also includes the Viaplay Nordic subscription video on-demand service, esports platform Viagame, and advertising VoD TV sites in eight European countries.
MTG is acquiring the shares based on an enterprise value of €88 million. Zoomin’s two founders, Jan Riemens (pictured, left) and Bram Bloemberg (right), will continue their roles within the company.
“It is now clear that we are creating an online video ecosystem that is fully prepared to capitalise on the next steps in the evolution of social video,” said Jørgen Madsen Lindemann, MTG president and CEO. “It will enable both Zoomin and our other market leading digital brands to expand even faster by leveraging our combined consumer insight, reach and cross-promotional potential. We will now operate right across the digital video entertainment spectrum, just as we have done so successfully with our TV content production studios, channel brands and distribution platforms.”
Zoomin.TV founders Riemens and Bloemberg added: “We wanted to team up with a company that knows the content arena inside out and that will elevate Zoomin to become an even bigger global player in the online video space. MTG’s near 900,000 hours of acquired and annually broadcast content, together with its leading in-house production studios, demonstrate this knowledge and platform. We have a proven business model for creating and monetising online video reach. Now we will accelerate our growth further by working with MTG to position ourselves as the ideal partner for video publishers looking to succeed internationally.”
Zoomin is the fifth largest multichannel network in the world, attracting more than two billion monthly video views and 100 million subscribers worldwide on YouTube. Zoomin also has a network of 2,000 publishers, including Yahoo, AOL, Bild and Telegraaf. Zoomin’s daily production includes more than 400 short video clips in 18 languages and 27 categories from video journalists all around the world. Zoomin’s in-house sales team sells advertising solutions on Zoomin and third party channels in 45 territories to consumer brands including P&G, Philips, Volkswagen and Unilever. Zoomin has generated 36 per cent average sales growth over the past five years, and 70 per cent growth in 2014 alone.
