Video Island acquires DVDs365

Guy
27 June 2005

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Video Island, the UK’s largest online DVD rental service today announced the acquisition of DVDs365. In a move to extend its leadership in the UK’s online DVD rental market, Video Island also brings on board DVDs365’s sister brands - Mailbox Movies, QFlicks and Movietrak, which DVDs365 has acquired over the last two years.

Video Island, which announced an additional £5m of funding earlier this month to bring the total raised to date to £15m, is the only online DVD rental business in Europe that has secured significant blue-chip venture capital backing. Today’s announcement confirms Video Island’s position as the major leader and driver of consolidation in the market place, a strategy initiated in the September 2004 with the acquisition of ScreenSelect.co.uk to create the UK’s clear market leader in terms of operating scale, partnerships and financing.

This acquisition of four additional well established brands allows Video Island to further expand its reach and leverage its high-volume operating platform, which already supports some of the UK’s largest brands including Tesco, ITV, easyGroup and MSN, as well as Screenselect.co.uk, the UK’s leading independent online DVD rental service.

DVDs365, Mailbox Movies, QFlicks and Movietrak customers will soon be able to enjoy access to Europe’s largest and most comprehensive DVD library of over 33,000 titles, unique integrated movie news-feeds, Radio Times reviews, as well as the superb customer service and delivery capabilities of the Video Island platform, ranked #1 by Which Computing in January 2005.

Bill Dobbie, founder and managing director of DVDs365, will join Video Island as an advisor to the board. In addition to his expertise within the online DVD market, Bill is very experienced in building fast growth, publicly listed companies and has also been a pioneer in the digital delivery of movies.

The move comes at an exciting time for the UK’s online DVD rental market. According to the latest estimates by Screen Digest, the online video rental business is on track to represent 15% of the total UK rental sector this year and by 2006 is expected to be worth £388m. As the clear leader in this marketplace, Video Island is now handling almost 1.5 million DVD shipments per month, shipping more than one DVD per second, equivalent to over 150 high street stores and delivering around 50 times more unique films per week than transmitted by broadcaster Sky Digital.