Alchimie has entered the US market by buying the publishing assets of TV4Entertainment.
The deal, for an undisclosed fee, sees Alchimie secure a portfolio of nearly ten thematic SVOD channels, including Motorland (Motors), DocCom TV (documentary), Nautical Mile (boating), Gone TV (hunt/Fish), Inside Outside (home and garden) and thousands of hours of streaming content. The assets also include a base of nearly 15,000 subscribers, representing sales of nearly $1 million.
TV4Entertainment’s publishing assets benefit from co-publishing agreements with 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 US audience.
Commenting on the transaction, Nicolas d’Hueppe, founder and CEO of Alchimie, said: “We are thrilled to welcome an experienced and close-knit team that will help us to establish a strong footprint in the US market. Acquiring the US publishing assets of TV4Entertainment 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 capitalise on high-quality assets validated on the US market. Moreover, we plan to rapidly leverage the in-depth connections of TV4Entertainment’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 the US 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 €1 million 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 TV4Entertainment, added: “We are pleased to find a home for some of our OTT publishing assets in Alchimie, 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 2/2 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”.
