GERMANY - Wellington invests in GIGA TV

A round of financing totaling EUR 3m and Wellington Partners’ entry as a new investor will enable GIGA Digital Television GmbH to strengthen its capital base. The operator of Europe’s largest online league, Turtle Entertainment GmbH, and Cuneo AG (with former ProSieben CEO and Wellington Venture Partner Michael Wölfle), had already invested in the network late last year. NBC UNIVERSAL, which had previously been the sole owner, reduces its share in GIGA TV to a minority stake through these transactions.

'This new round of financing will enable us to speed up production of content for our network and the Web, and to simultaneously link the content from the two more strongly with one another,' explains GIGA managing director Jens Hilgers. One particular focus in this connection is on IP-TV, which enables television content to be streamed or downloaded over the Internet on a for-fee basis. With its 24-hour-a-day network, GIGA TV is operating in one of the media industry’s highest-growth submarkets: gaming – where world market volume totaled €30 billion in 2005. GIGA is linking transmission of such popular games as Warcraft, FIFA 2006 or Live for Speed from the Electronic Sports League (ESL) with information relating to online, console and PC games as well as technology and entertainment.

'The mix of gaming, e-sports and information is being very well received by our target audience and the advertising market,' notes GIGA Managing Director Michael Wölfle. He points to the rapid growth of membership in the GIGA community: '10,000 new members are signing up each month.' Overall, more than one million members have already registered at GIGA and ESL, and GIGA TV is reaching over 30 million TV households in Europe via satellite, including seven million in Germany.

With its investment in GIGA TV, Wellington Partners is broadening its activities in the TV market, and is now invested in three television networks. Wellington General partner Jörg Überla explains: 'Digitization in the TV industry is lending an entirely new dynamic to the familiar buzzword of media convergence: the combination of TV, internet and wireless will be spawning any number of new and promising business models.' With a view to the new investment, he adds: 'GIGA TV has an established brand name, a young audience, a scalable business model and a seasoned management team. This gives GIGA the opportunity of setting standards in the gaming market throughout Europe.'

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• Topics
• Expansion
• DACH
• Media