Rightster Group has acquired Viral Management (Viral Spiral) and will acquire Base79.
The group is also placing 75 million new ordinary shares by Cenkos, to raise £42 million at a price of 56 pence per share.
Rightster is acquiring outstanding shares in Viral Spiral for a total consideration of up to £4.1m. The proposed acquisition of Base79 is for a total consideration of up to £50m in cash and shares.
Base79 is the largest YouTube multi channel network outside of North America with approximately 760 million views per month from 1,100+ content partners including SBTV, Reuters, and Ministry of Sound.
The deal brings together Rightster’s tech-supported 360 distribution and monetisation expertise, with Base79’s leading position as the largest YouTube partner outside North America and Viral Spiral’s expertise in social video management, licensing and brand engagement.
The combined company and its customers, will benefit from a significant increase in scale: the acquisitions more than double Rightster’s existing number of customers, adding over 2,000 YouTube channels. Post the acquisitions, Rightster’s aggregated traffic will increase from 371 million video views per month to 1.1 billion.
Charlie Muirhead, founder and CEO of Rightster, commented: “Acquiring Base79 and Viral Spiral is transformational for Rightster. Together, they more than double the number of content partners on Rightster’s 360 video distribution platform and catapult us past the 1 billion video views per month milestone, making Rightster the largest YouTube partner outside North America by reach and a top 5 partner in North America. Importantly, this greater scale and expertise improves the service we will be able to offer creators and publishers, improving our ability to both grow audiences and increase monetisation and positions us as a global leader in the exploding online video market for brands and media agencies.”
Ashley MacKenzie, founder and CEO of Base79, commented: “I am delighted that Base79 will now be able to offer an expanded range of services and support to both current and future customers. By joining forces with Rightster, we will be able to bring the expertise and industry relationships of the combined group across the world.”
Damian Collier, founder and CEO of Viral Spiral, commented: “Having worked with, and grown alongside, Rightster for the past 2 years, I am thrilled that we and our team are now joining forces with them and Base79 to enable us to offer the broadest possible range of multi-platform services and solutions to our customers globally, in an increasingly complex marketplace.”
