Investment boost for MUSO
August 3, 2022
By Colin Mann
MUSO, a London-based data company that provides a complete and trusted view of global piracy and unlicensed media consumption, has received a £3.2 million (€3.8m) investment from Puma Private Equity, a provider of growth capital to small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) across all sectors and regions of the UK.
MUSO has seen a 25 per cent increase in general digital piracy year-on-year, when comparing H1 of 2021 to H1 of 2022. Its data is fast becoming a must-have data currency for entertainment companies and is already used by the likes of Amazon Studios, National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), NOS, Lionsgate, MNRK (formally eOne Music), Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe, and more. MUSO’s technology measures hundreds of billions of visits to Piracy websites each year and provides unrivalled consumption and audience data that allows rights-holders to better protect their content from Piracy but also increase their revenues.
This investment showcases Puma Private Equity’s commitment to supporting growing SMEs in their ambitions to scale; the £3.2 million investment will support the establishment of MUSO’s marketing function and larger build out of its sales teams in both the United Kingdom and United States.
“Piracy remains a significant issue for the entertainment industry, but MUSO’s data enables companies to use it to discover vast, valuable as up to now, unseen audiences,” commented Andy Chatterley, Chief Executive Officer of MUSO. “Our customers are using our data to acquire and commission content, unlock new marketing opportunities, leverage value in licensing negotiations, maximise and optimise windowing strategies. MUSO is a game-changer to the entertainment industry’s approach to piracy. We are turning the tables on two decades of losses and creating value-driven opportunities from this challenging inevitability of digital consumption.
“This investment from Puma Private Equity comes at an incredibly transformative time for MUSO,” he added. “Piracy continues to be a major problem for rightsholders and we are committed to implementing new strategies that allow us to not only protect content but to provide increased commercial value by measuring, understanding and activating our audience data. We will be deploying this investment into expanding our sales and marketing teams and activities to highlight MUSO’s valuable products and data to the global entertainment industries.”
“We’re pleased to have completed our investment in MUSO, as we believe the business shows significant growth potential,” said Harriet Rosethorn, Investment Manager at Puma Private Equity. “As on-demand streaming platforms grow and drive a fragmentation of content distribution, global firms like MUSO will play an increasingly important role in monitoring and tackling piracy. This deal is just the latest example of Puma Private Equity’s long track record of supporting companies with untapped growth potential. We look forward to working closely with the team to achieve their goals.”
MUSO engaged M&A Advisor Lazarus Consulting to find and secure the right investor for the company.