Accelerating its plans to expand into the country, which it regards as Europe’s most developed SVOD market, international content aggregation firm Alchimie is to buy UK-based over-the-top provider TVPlayer.
Alchimie already has revenue-share partnerships with over 250 content rights-owners including Arte, ZDF and NHK resulting in what it claims is one of Europe’s largest portfolios of premium, multi-language, factual content. The acquisition builds Alchimie’s recent expansion into Spain, Austria, France, Belgium, Germany and Australia, where it already distributes subscription content to mobile network and digital platform partners, including Google, Amazon, EE, SFR, Orange, Proximus and RTV.
TV Player currently has a 450,000-strong viewer base and four million downloads. The acquisition will see Alchimie introduce new UK distribution channels via the TV Player platform for its portfolio of premium factual content. With a focus on the natural world, crime, current affairs, history and children’s content, Alchimie’s 40,000-hour catalogue will refresh content on the SVOD section of the TV Player platform and app.
“TVPlayer gives us the opportunity to accelerate our plans for the launch of Alchimie UK, the visibility to support negotiations with UK rights owners, as well as access to audience data.” Said Nicolas d’Hueppe, CEO of Alchimie. “There are tremendous synergies to support the acquisition; our content portfolio enables us to restructure the channel offering behind the paywall, additionally our strong relationships with telecoms companies will introduce a potential new market to TVPlayer.”
“As part of Alchimie, TV Player will be able to offer audiences a much broader range of high-quality content over SVOD channels, designed to appeal to special interests and passions,” added TV Player founder Adam Smith. “Whether you’re a gamer, a nature lover, a classical music lover, or a motorsports fan, you be able to find the best content on TV Player.”