Rostelecom and National Media Group to merge video services more.tv and Wink

Rostelecom and the National Media Group (NMG) announced at SPIEF that they will merge video services more.tv and Wink under the latter’s brand. The parties will set up a joint venture (JV) for this purpose, in which Rostelecom will have a 70% stake and NMG a 30%. Until the end of the year, the combined structure may take 15% of the market, and its total subscriber base will reach 10 million, analysts believe.

On June 15, Rostelecom President Mikhail Oseevsky and NMG CEO Svetlana Balanova signed a deal to merge more.tv and Wink video services at SPIEF. The new structure will operate under the Wink brand. The share of Rostelecom in the authorized capital of the united online cinema will be 70%, NMG – 30%. The more.tv online cinema and a 50% stake in NMG Studio are transferred from NMG, and the Wink online cinema from Rostelecom, including a platform for working in OTT and IPTV environments.

“The joint venture will be able to accelerate the development of the combined assets, increase our share in the rapidly growing market and offer the best exclusive content that takes into account the interests of our audience,” said Mikhail Oseevsky.

The manager specified that the companies are considering bringing new products to the platform, including music and literature.

Technological integration of platforms will take place in stages, specified in the NMG. “Until the integration procedures are completed, subscribers will continue to use the Wink and more.tv video services on the current terms. The joint venture will also consider options for further use of the more.tv brand to solve business problems,” the company said.

In 2018, Rostelecom and NMG already established the Media Telecom JV, which produces and aggregates television and video content, as well as distributes TV channels and media libraries in Russia and the CIS countries. The fact that partners can combine and video services became known last summer (see. “Kommersant” dated July 7, 2022). Then it was planned to complete the deal by the end of 2022, also combining content libraries, client bases and creating a single center of competence for producing and producing original content.

In 2022, according to TMT Consulting, Wink’s share in the online video services market was 11%, while revenue grew by 44%. More.tv occupied 5% of the market over the period, and the service’s revenue increased by 27% over the year, analysts calculated. (cm. “Kommersant” from March 17). Then the director of Wink, Anton Volodkin, said that the company expects to accelerate growth in 2023, “the previously announced consolidation of Wink and more.tv online cinemas is expected to be completed, and this structure will naturally take a large market share.”

As part of the joint venture, the Rostelecom platform will be used, according to a Kommersant source in the industry. “However, the main issue is the subscriber base. Such a merger was initiated by MegaFon and Start, which announced that everything would be completed by the end of 2022, but the process has not yet been completed. The reason is simple: the relatively large subscriber base of MegaFon.” Announcing to them that the operator platform is no longer working and offering to simply switch to a new service means losing most of the subscribers along the way, ”says our interlocutor.

Kommersant’s source believes that it is not yet clear what the new combined structure of NMG and Rostelecom will have a subscriber base and what revenue will be.

“How many more.tv subscribers will eventually reach Rostelecom’s video service is a big task for people who will make a transition plan,” he emphasizes.

It is already the middle of the year, but if Wink continues to grow, then the joint venture can claim 15% of the market by the end of 2023, says Alexei Byrdin, CEO of the Internet Video Association. The base of the combined video service, according to the head of the information and analytical agency Content-Review Sergey Polovnikov, will amount to 10 million subscribers.

Julia Yurasova