(This is from today’s newsletter. You can subscribe here.)
Digestible Media
Film/TV/Video
- Tencent is acquiring Iflix, a leading VOD service in Southeast Asia and the Middle East with 25M MAUs across 13 markets. (Read more)
- The Kuala Lumpur-based company raised $348M in outside funding since 2014. It’s IPO in Sydney was canceled when the market crashed due to Covid-19.
- Variety reports the acquisition price is in the “tens of millions” which is a steep cut from prior valuations.
- FuboTV added ESPN and ABC channels to its OTT subscription. The addition of ESPN is a huge win for Fubo, which has anchored itself in live sports content. (Read more)
- Disney says Disney+ will expand to 8 more European countries on Sept 15 with prices in the €7-8 range depending on country. (Read more)
- Snap announced an interactive, shoppable show on Snapchat. (Read more)
- Pixellot, an Israel-based provider of automated video production technology for sporting events, raised $16M from Shamrock Capital and other investors. (Read more)
- NENT Group and Finland’s Elisa Viihde are forming a JV to combine SVOD offerings in Finland. (Read more)
Music
- Saban Music Group, the music group announced last July with $500M in backing from Haim Saban and a focus on developing international artists from LatAm and other regions, signed a global admin deal with Universal Music Publishing. (Read more)
Podcasting/Audio
- Wondery, the LA-based podcast studio, launched its own podcast streaming app. (Read more)
- iHeartMedia signed a deal with WarnerMedia to produce companion podcasts for HBO Max shows. (Read more)
Interactive Media
Gaming
- Treehouse Games, an LA-based game studio focused on collaborative games, raised $2.6M in seed funding from London Venture Partners (LVP), Transcend Fund, and Kristian Segestrale (CEO of Super Evil Megacorp). (Read more)
- Epic Games‘ portal for buying and playing PC games, the Epic Games Store, hit 61 million MAUs this past month. It sunk money into free give-aways of popular games to lure new users. (Read more)
- By comparison, Valve’s Steam portal (the longtime market leader) had 91 million MAUs at the end of last year.
- By comparison, Valve’s Steam portal (the longtime market leader) had 91 million MAUs at the end of last year.
- Absolutely Games unveiled itself as a new UK-based studio led by serial gaming entrepreneur James Brooksby. Rebellion and Cedric Littardi provided seed funding. (Read more)
- Activision Blizzard and Tencent‘s Call of Duty: Mobile has had 250 million downloads since launching in October. (Read more)
- EA renewed an exclusivity deal with La Liga to include the Italian soccer league’s teams and players in the FIFA game franchise. (Read more)
- Unity made its full library of educational courses for learning how to use Unity free. (View here)
AR/VR
- Facebook acquired Ready at Dawn Studios, the VR studio behind the Lone Echo game franchise that has offices in Irvine, CA and Portland, OR. Its Facebook’s third acquisition of a VR studio in the last year. (Read more)
- Facebook is discontinuing production and support for the Oculus Go headset. (Read more)
- As the first decent cordless VR headset, it marked an important stepping stone, but it was underwhelming in tech specs and content offerings. The newer Quest headset is the substantially improved update to Go.
Communications
- The European Commission released a two-year review of GDPR saying the data privacy law is working but there needs to be far more resources devoted to enforcing of it. (Read more)