VK attracted “medium quality” – Newspaper Kommersant No. 235 (7436) of 12/19/2022

VK took control of Medium Quality, a creative producer of Comedy Club Production Vyacheslav Dusmukhametov, which releases popular shows for YouTube. The studio will make new exclusive content for the holding’s video platforms, but the release of current shows will continue. The Medium Quality deal will allow the development of production after monetization is turned off on YouTube, and VK will attract a new audience, experts say. Kommersant’s sources say that the studio will receive a significant production budget with tight performance indicators that will affect the final amount of the transaction.

Sources of Kommersant in the media market said that VK closed a deal to buy a controlling stake in the Medium Quality studio of the creative producer Comedy Club Production (part of the Gazprom Media holding) Vyacheslav Dusmukhametov. The talks started even before the start of hostilities in Ukraine, says one of Kommersant’s interlocutors.

“Initially, the owner wanted to receive several billion rubles for the asset, but even then the estimate was much higher than the market,” says a Kommersant source. He claims that right now there is no cash component in the deal: Mr. Dusmukhametov will receive a “significant amount for production,” and the final payment for a stake in the company will be determined within a few years, subject to a number of conditions. Another Kommersant source familiar with the details of the deal confirms that it includes “investing in the production of new shows,” as well as “implementing tough KPIs on key metrics, including views.” VK declined to comment, Comedy Club Production did not respond.

In such projects, first of all, the expertise of the team and producers is bought, in a particular case, Mr. Dusmukhametov, a source on the market explains to Kommersant. According to him, Comedy Club producers working for Gazprom-Media have long wanted to “do something without TNT”, and VK gave a budget for this, “as a result of Slava (Dusmukhametov.— “b”) will continue to make content for GPMC TV channels, and digital content for VK platforms.”

According to SPARK-Interfax, LLC Medium Quality Production was registered in 2018, it has 33 employees, revenue in 2021 is 1.1 billion rubles, net profit is 132 million rubles. Medium Quality releases YouTube projects “What happened next?” (more than 7.5 million people have subscribed to the channel of the Labelcom project, but the show has not been released since January), Big Russian Boss Show (2.7 million), “I know myself!” (1.4 million), “Inside Lapenko” (3.1 million), etc. In 2021, the company launched The Hole video streaming platform for YouTube shows in a mobile format. Whether the VK content library and The Hole will pass, Kommersant’s sources do not say. One of them clarified that the release of current shows will continue.

Throughout 2022, VK ​​has been actively preparing for the large-scale launch of the VK Video platform. The deal with Medium Quality will allow the holding to strengthen its position in the video content market, one of Kommersant’s interlocutors believes. “For Medium Quality, this is an opportunity to develop production after YouTube has actually closed monetization in the Russian Federation, and for VK, this is an opportunity to attract a new audience,” he believes. According to VK, the average daily number of views on the VK video technology platform (videos on VKontakte, Odnoklassniki and VK Clips) increased by 49% over eleven months, to 2.75 billion.

Now all content deals are very effective for monetization, says Alexei Bokov, head of the Start Ads advertising division. “Three local brands have taken the place of any Western advertiser. And VK is the main platform for placement,” he notes. Content and its producers are bought with an already established growing audience, which will give good synergy, says producer, co-owner of Nashe Kino company Maxim Rogalsky.

At the same time, the old Medium Quality library is actually of no value to VK, according to a Kommersant source on the market. “The audience is interested in such shows at the moment, they are quickly losing popularity, in addition, some of the projects had quite harsh humor, which by today’s standards may raise questions,” he says. Another problem, according to him, is that some of the famous characters have already left Medium Quality projects, so the producers will have to look for new ones.

Julia Silence, Valeria Lebedeva, Nikita Korolev