MTG Invests in Europe’s Online TV Market

MTG has acquired 51% of Zoomin.TV, the online video entertainment network, content production and advertising sales house. This follows MTG’s announced investments in ESL, the world’s largest e-sports company and Splay, Scandinavia’s number one MCN and digital content creator in the last few weeks.

These new ventures reflects MTG’s strategy to invest in relevant, complementary and scalable digital brands, content and communities. MTG’s fast growing digital portfolio also includes the Viaplay Nordic subscription video on demand service, e-sports platform Viagame, and numerous advertising video on demand TV sites in 8 European countries.

Zoomin is the 5th largest MCN in the world, attracting more than two billion monthly video views and 100 million subscribers worldwide on YouTube. The online TV provider also has a network of 2,000 publishers, which
includes leading media brands such as Yahoo, AOL, Bild and Telegraaf. Their daily production includes more than 400 premium short video clips in 18 languages and 27 categories from video journalists all around the world.

In addition to this, the online network’s in-house sales team sells advertising solutions on Zoomin and third party channels in 45 territories to leading consumer brands including P&G, Philips, Volkswagen and Unilever. Zoomin has generated 36% average sales growth over the past 5 years, and 70% growth in 2014 alone, making it a wise investment for MTG and signifying their rapid growth strategy in the European online TV market.

The agreement sees MTG acquire the shares based on an Enterprise Value of €88 million. Zoomin’s two founders, Jan Riemens and Bram Bloemberg, who founded the firm in 2002 in Amsterdam, will continue to drive the company’s development.

Jørgen Madsen Lindemann, MTG President and CEO was keen to emphasise that moving forward the two firm’s hoped to expand on Zoomin’s expansion in the industry using MTG’s experience.

‘This combination of global web talent and content, massive reach amongst millennials, and proven monetization capabilities confirms our position as a leading player in the global online video entertainment space. It is now clear that we are creating an online video eco-system that is fully prepared to capitalise on the next steps in the evolution of social video. 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. So…welcome to the Zoomin team, and we look forward to realising some big ambitions together.’