Once Disney agreed to pay up to $950m for YouTube MCN Maker Studios, attention turned to its closest rival Fullscreen, which has been rumoured to be on the verge of selling for months. Yesterday, the deal was finally announced: Otter Media, a joint venture between US telco AT&T and investment firm The Chernin Group, is buying a controlling stake in Fullscreen. The deal values the company at between $200m and $300m according to tech site Recode, which notes that Fullscreen’s network of channels currently generates around 4bn monthly views on YouTube. For comparison, Maker Studios was at 5.5bn monthly views when its Disney deal was agreed. Fullscreen CEO George Strompolos is staying in position, and will still have a “material ownership stake” in the company. “We want to compete with the biggest players there have even been,” he told Ad Age. “To do that we need major resources on our side. This gave us the right opportunity to secure those resources while retaining an ownership stake in what we create. We didn’t want to be in a situation where we get sucked into the vacuum of a megacorp overnight.”
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Tools: Kaiber
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