JW Player raises $100m Series E financing
June 24, 2021
Video software and data insights platform JW Player has raised $100 million in Series E funding from LLR Partners. The latest investment comes on the heels of record video streaming growth and strong profitability during the previous 12 months.
With this financing, JW Player will accelerate product innovation to meet the rapidly changing demands of customers in today’s digital video environment, expand its global go-to-market footprint across sales, marketing and channel partnerships and continue to grow and invest in building a world-class team.
The funding round follows JW Player’s recent acquisition of live and on-demand video streaming and Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions provider VUALTO that deepened the company’s offering to global broadcasters. In the days following the acquisition, JW Player has seen a material uptick and influx of sales and pipeline, especially in the LatAm and APAC regions.
Started as an open source video player, JW Player’s API-driven video platform now empowers hundreds of thousands of customers to control and operate their mobile, OTT and Web video applications independently at global scale.
JW Player claims that, importantly, it includes unique data-driven services and knowledge so that customers can more effectively grow and engage their audiences and generate more incremental revenue from their video investments. In the last year alone, the company’s video streaming grew by nearly 200 per cent, while its live streaming delivery increased by over 400 per cent.
This financing arrives as the consumption of digital video continues its push to the mainstream. According to JW Player data, people are consuming over two hours of digital video each day, a 40 per cent increase since the beginning of 2020, suggesting that, as a result, a digital video strategy has become a ‘must have’ not only for media companies, but also for organisations of all types, including fitness, e-commerce, sports and e-learning businesses, among others, with the addressable market on target to grow from $14 billion today to $50 billion by 2027, a 20 per cent CAGR.
“Video has entered into a golden age, and we now live in the Digital Video Economy,” stated Dave Otten, CEO and co-founder of JW Player. “By combining our easy-to-use video platform technology with our unique consumption and contextual data insights, JW Player has a distinct advantage in helping customers grow their audiences, create world-class video experiences on any screen, and most importantly, generate more revenue. As we enter this next phase, we are thrilled to partner with LLR. LLR’s team brings decades of unmatched support and expertise in growing industry-changing software companies and will undoubtedly help us accelerate our success as we pursue this massive market opportunity together.”
“JW Player has been at the forefront of digital video innovation ever since founder Jeroen Wijering created YouTube’s original video player in 2008,” added David Reuter, Partner at LLR Partners. “Today, the company offers the most comprehensive technology, advertising and data analytics platform in the digital video ecosystem,” “We look forward to partnering with the JW Player team as they expand their platform and continue to elevate the way brands can host, stream and monetise video.”