Advanced Television

Alchimie acquires thematic channels from TV4

March 11, 2021

Alchimie, an OTT SVoD platform featuring original and exclusive thematic channels published jointly with media groups and talents, has announced the acquisition of the publishing assets of TV4 Entertainment, a global player in OTT streaming channels.

Through this operation, Alchimie is acquiring a portfolio of nearly ten thematic SVoD channels, such as Motorland (Motors), DocComTV (documentary), Nautical Mile (boating), Gone TV (hunt/Fish), Inside Outside (home and garden), comprising thousands of hours of streaming content and targeting underserved and passionate global communities. The assets already include a base of nearly 15,000 subscribers representing sales of nearly $1 million.

TV4Entertainment’s publishing assets benefit from co-publishing agreements with leading worldwide media groups All3Media and Flame, which have already produced themed OTT channels with sizeable and growing audiences in the factual entertainment space. These assets include content across various categories and tier-one distribution partnerships with Amazon channels and Roku enabling TV4’s OTT channels to reach a substantial portion of the global US audience.

The operation is consistent with Alchimie’s external growth strategy that aims to accelerate its international expansion through the acquisition of international publishing portfolios, including distribution and content rights agreements, as well as channels with mature subscriber bases.The amount paid for the deal, is undisclosed but it is operated on the basis of a competitive revenue multiple compared to that of Alchimie.

Nicolas d’Hueppe, founder and CEO of Alchimie, commented: “We are thrilled to welcome an experiencedand close-knit team that will help us to establish a strong footprint in the US market. Acquiring the US publishing assets of TV4 Entertainment is a transformative operation that allows us to save a significant amount of time in terms of development and provides us with the ability to directly capitalize on high-quality assets validated on the US market. Moreover, we plan to rapidly leverage thein-depth connections of TV4 Entertainment’s partnerships in the US streaming ecosystem, in particular its tier-one agreements in both co-publishing and distribution. We also intend to rapidly activate new synergies between our existing English-speaking channel offer and opportunities in theUS and are confident in the successful integration of these assets, supported by our close ties within the team. Our ambition is to reach a turnover of one million euros in the US by 2021. With this acquisition, Alchimie is accelerating the execution of its strategy ,positioning itself as the future global leader on SVoD affinity thematic content, in accordance with the roadmap announced at the time of the capital increase.”

Jon Cody, Founder of TV4 Entertainment, added: “We are pleased to find a home for some of ourOTT publishingassets inAlchimie, a company with which we share the same values and market vision. Beyond competition between giants of this industry on the core market comprising premium series, a huge opportunity persists on the thematic affinity segments still underserved in the OTT universe. The US market is one of the most dynamic OTT markets in the world, as shown by the various operations and recent IPO on this segment. I am confident in Alchimie’s ability to rapidly perform on the market thanks to our channel portfolio’s potential and its complementarity with their assets, as well as their in-depth knowledge of the industry”.

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