Enginelab and the new breed of cloud postproducer

Enginelab and the new breed of cloud postproducer

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It takes a brave soul to launch a new VFX facility given the meltdown at one of the industry’s largest, but creative entrepreneurs conversant with cloud economics are confident that there are good opportunities to be grasped.

UK startup Enginelab is the latest of a new breed of postproduction company designed around facilities in the cloud and powered by AI.

Two of its three founders come from Untold Studios which broke ground in 2018 establishing the world's first cloud-native creative studio with a template of cloud render nodes and virtual workstations.

Sam Reid was CTO of the initial Untold team helping grow the company from a handful of employees to several hundred bringing international business to its creative services from commercial brands, pop artists, studios and streamers.

“I've learned a thing or two about how to how to work in the cloud and how to how to make the cloud work for media and entertainment,” says Reid. “We're cautiously optimistic that increased volumes of work are coming back into the market and that new studios are going to pop up that will need next generation technology, solutions and workflows to support them.”

Describing Enginelab as a full-service independent technology business he adds, “We don't need edit suites. We not going to be hiring artists. We're going to be providing the infrastructure for studio businesses and we’re going to be the technology experts they can call upon for guidance and leadership.”

Joining Reid in the venture is colleague and senior developer from Untold Daniel Goller; and Matt Herman who founded roto and paint shop Trace VFX before selling it to Technicolor in 2016.  Subsequently, Herman took animation and visual effects outfit Psyop from multiple on-prem studios to a fully cloud and remote operation, expanding the business by opening lightweight facilities in Mexico City, Berlin and Hamburg.

“Because we have [set up facilities] once before we should be able to do it again but a lot quicker,” Reid says. “We’re also going to use AI to help us do that.”

Specifically, Enginelab will use AI to automate processes. “AI helps with technical manipulation, the really boring, mundane jobs that an artist would have to do so they can focus more on their craft,” Reid explains. “I’ve have spent a lot of time at Untold evangelising and implementing AI workflows. Now I’m keen to unlock efficiencies in workflows for other businesses. For example, AI can write code a lot more efficiently and a lot better too.”

It’s not too much of a stretch to suggest that the recent collapse of Technicolor is end of the line for post models with volumes of real estate, thousands of employed staff and huge overheads. It is being replaced by leaner organisations where infrastructure is for hire to be tailored per project and scaled up or down as required.

“It's all very well shutting everything down and minimising spend, but you need to be able to quickly kick it back into motion when you get a big project that needs lots of render nodes, for example,” Reid says. “You also have to be comfortable doing it, because it’s one thing knowing you can do it, but you need to have the team around you who know how to do that properly so you don't end up with huge bills and in situations you find it very difficult to get out of.”

In his obituary to Technicolor, Michael Elson, COO at MPC from 1998 to 2008, said The Mill was “founded by visionaries and powered by super talent, ravished by neglect”. MPC, he said, was “killed by a management so adrift it’s criminal”. Of Technicolor itself Elson concluded, “A corporate behemoth was never equipped to deal [with] a world that requires you to be light on your feet and adaptable.”

Reid and Herman are alumni of The Mill, both starting out their careers there in the engineering departments. They are wary of not making the same mistakes as its parent.

“It’s about staying lean and not falling into a trap of huge overheads by being able to adapt to dips in work,” Reid says. “Cloud technology helps with that because you can be very in control of the costs.”

He adds, “I really enjoyed working at The Mill and it’s sad to see what's happened to it. It's where I fell in love with technology. One thing I’ve learned is that when our backs are against the wall everyone bands together. You can see it happening right now. We're having some really interesting conversations with people about setting up new studios and hopefully we'll be able to help them.

“The future is definitely much less about having a physical presence and owning kit. The facilities are disposable to be honest.

“People are the assets and always have been in this industry. We need to protect them because they are the ones that drive value.”

Enginelab are optimistic that the industry as a whole has turned a corner on the last few years of Covid, strikes and economic downturn.  It has its eye too on the 29.25% tax credit for UK VFX that comes into effect on 1 April 2025 (and is backdated for activity after Jan 1 2025). It probably won't receive Royal Assent until late March.

“There zero chance it will fail at this point,” Neil Hatton, CEO, UK Screen Alliance tells IBC365. “HMRC, however, won't issue guidance until it's written in law and there are signs that this is causing some clients to hang back on commitment until they are 100% certain of what is claimable.”

Reid highlights the increasing global and transient nature of the workforce and shifts in locating productions to soak up different tax benefits.

“We hope to see a lot more studios come to the UK especially for films and HETV work. The key to success in 2025 is being able to work with pockets of people around the world. Our challenge is how to make it a seamless and frictionless process.”

They aspire to emulate the business model of Untold which spans longform as much as shortform work.

“With a longform project you are looking at many months to potentially years of work, so things like managing the data  become a lot more of a challenge and more of a focus point. Advertising can be started and finished within a few weeks. The challenge here is to be very efficient and render shots quickly.

“We should be able to set up a very secure environment for creatives to focus on what they do best while we make the technology work really hard for them. Those artists could be in Boston or Cape Town as equally as they might be north of London.”

Having established a relationship with AWS at Untold, Reid says it starts as Enginelab’s preferred cloud provider. “If a customer wants to use a different cloud provider then we'll be agnostic. I'm not a cloud salesman, I'm a technologist. We want to work with businesses to craft them the best technology solution that could be in the cloud or it could be on prem or it could be both.”

“If it was a full cloud environment with render, storage and workstations there for maximum efficiency we can also help businesses work together. If more people use the same platform we can create some smart automations and ways of sharing data.

“For example, a big feature film might want to engage us to host their data and we would securely serve data and functionalities out to different vendors on that show. Certainly, there will be a power in numbers if everyone is using the same infrastructure.”

 

Relo Metrics Gets up to Speed with F1 Sponsorship

Streaming Media

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As sports move online and sponsorship investment follows tracking on-screen brand exposure need to keep pace, not easy when logos are travelling at 200 Mph. Relo Metrics is using a new AI-powered tool to do just this for millions of sponsorship placements in real-time with expansion into other motorsports and then European football leagues to follow.

“F1 is our first truly global sport,” says CEO Jay Prasad. “Every race weekend it gets 100 million viewers around the world. We’ve plans to expand into other motorsport series like Formula E, WEC, and MotoGP. European football is probably where we're heading next.”

According to the SportsPro ‘Formula One 2024 Business Report,’ F1 is experiencing explosive commercial growth and attracting 100+ million weekly viewers, a global audience comparable to the annual Super Bowl. Sponsorship spend across F1 and its teams for the 2025 season is projected to reach more than $2.9 billion, an increase of ten percent year-over-year (YoY), according to a recent study by Ampere Analysis.

Debuting at the Australian Grand Prix, Relo’s Census platform enables brands, teams, and agencies to track sponsorship performance instantly and optimise investments mid-season.

“Motorsport in general has some inherent challenges to it because it's not two teams playing one another like on a football pitch,” says Prasad. “Each [branded car] is very different from one another.”

Formula One runs 10 teams, Moto GP has 11 and NASCAR can field up to 17 teams with multiple cars interweaving with one another at high speed. This clearly creates challenges attempting to track things accurately. In addition, the circuits and grand stands are outfitted with LEDs and signage some of which are virtual assets input into the broadcast stream.

“Because of these inherent challenges we’ve invested further in computer vision-based AI to build neural network models to train our models and basically solve this problem,” says Prasad.

Specifically, Relo has doubled memory capacity and throughput by upgrading to Nvidia’s multi-modal AI model, to train on larger datasets more efficiently.

Traditional methods struggle to accurately capture fast-moving brand placements on cars traveling at over 200+ mph, often relying on manual annotation or delayed post-race analysis.

“From a quality standpoint, just because [a logo] appeared on screen doesn't necessarily mean it had value. If it's totally blurry, then it doesn't have value. Virtual assets could also be animated.”

The camera angles offered by the host broadcast are already designed to maximise the amount of time sponsor logos are on screen.

“Measurement has to keep up with this,” says Prasad. “There are also inserts of driver cameras [point of view cameras from the car cockpit] which our model also takes into account.”

Relo applies scene detection frame by frame across a feed of the host broadcast feed as the race is played out live. It runs three detection models simultaneously. One to detect the logo, another to understand logo placement (such as is it a car or a billboard), and a third sponsor recognition model that classifies each logo that gets detected and says what brand it is by probability

“You have logo, placement, and rights holder.  We have to create a taxonomy of all the placements on the car, the track, and the driver and then track what's happening across all those variables using this advanced model.”

However, at such speeds even the computer vision can still get it wrong. “We can analyze the race data live to deliver initial sponsorship scores but we will then do additional quality processing post-race to deliver a final report. We correct errors with manual checks. We do reinforcement with humans in the loop and the more mistakes we correct, the smarter [the machine] becomes.”

Relo also calculate the media value by factoring in viewership numbers (which are not just global figures but which compare how viewers in different geographic areas).

“There's a bit of a lag in getting those numbers. We can analyze some things fairly quickly and get it up to 95% accuracy level and then for final publication we apply viewing figures.”

Relo Metrics also parses the data through social media. “There’s an important window immediately after the race when things go viral. We can capture all the activity in social and digital sports and news websites.”

The idea is for brands to gain greater understanding into the value of their investment when their logo is exposed for fractions of a second a time on screen.

“Instead of just reporting total values for posts or partners, we delve into the specifics to uncover potential hidden value. This approach allows for a deeper understanding of how each element contributes to overall sponsorship effectiveness, revealing insights that might otherwise go unnoticed.”

Relo Metrics analytics software is licenced directly brands and means brands can now compare F1 sponsorship performance analysis and comparison across multiple sports leagues and media environments.

“Expanding Relo Census into F1 is about more than just tracking sponsorship exposure; it’s about bringing motorsports into a larger ecosystem of sponsorship valuation,” Prasad says.

“We built Census so that brands could benchmark views across sports,” Prasad says. “We started with the major North American sports and built computer vision models for the NFL and NBA then WNBA and MLS. Now we’re adding NWSL and more and more professional sports. That means we've created a syndicated set of placements in those sports. Multinational brands are looking for a more advanced capability and measurement so they can track and compare their investments across multiple sports. And they want F1 to be a part of the way they're analysing their sponsorships overall.”

Allied Market Research shows sports sponsorship is projected to reach $151.4 billion by 2032.

“Say you’re a marketing lead at a bank and thinking about investing in a sport and you are thinking the Northeast U.S. is a good market for you, you might want to know which other brands are active in the Northeast and what share of voice do they have across what sport and what placement is driving all the value. We judge for clarity, for duration, for share of voice. Many different factors go into our quality score.”

Relo already works with two NASCAR teams and plan to adapt its model for any motorsport.

“We are confident that we'll be able to keep adapting what we've built so that we can offer this level of granularity and scale to all motorsports.”

F1 sponsorship

Teams account for 72% of total sponsorship revenue, with corporate F1 deals contributing the remainder.

The average number of sponsors per team is 32. McLaren leads with 51 unique partners. The Williams’ title sponsorship deal with Australian software corporation Atlassian is the largest team asset sold for the upcoming season so far. Ampere estimates this to be worth between $25-35m annually.

French luxury goods company LVMH announced a 10-year sponsorship deal with Formula 1 starting in 2025, valued at over $100 million a year.  Its brands include Louis Vuitton, Moët Hennessy and TAG Heuer.

Technology and financial service brands (cryptocurrency, software/SaaS and gambling) are the largest investors of new sponsorship deals signed for the 2025 season. They include American Express entering its first full season as a F1 Global partner and IBM with Scuderia Ferrari.

 

Dick Pope BSC: Life through a Lens

British Cinematographer

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One of the most understated and respected cinematographers of his generation passed in October, leaving behind a body of work that can’t be matriculated by awards or nominations.  

Richard Pope, known as Dick, was born in Bromley, Kent in 1947. An early appreciation for stills photography came from his father who gave him a Box Brownie and let him use his Zeiss twin lens reflex camera.  

“The camera was particularly suited to portraiture and Dick began to recruit potential subjects from his neighbourhood, turning his lounge in Kent into a makeshift studio,” records Phil Méheux BSC in the book Preserving the Vision. “He had also become a regular at his local cinema, where he developed a strong passion for film and decided to combine his love of photography and cinema into a career as a cinematographer.” 

Aged 16, he began a three-year apprenticeship at the Pathé Film Laboratory in Wardour Street, Soho. In 1968, having tried unsuccessfully to join the BBC, he went freelance and became a clapper loader on low-budget British sex comedies like Loving Feeling which, according to Méheux, felt far away from his ambitions.  

By 1974, he was filming documentaries, travelling to remote and hostile areas including war zones for films about endangered indigenous tribes for Granada series Disappearing World (1974), political journalism for World in Action (1976-8), and arts programmes for The South Bank Show. 

During the 1970s and into the early 1980s he operated on hundreds of rock concerts, many for BBC’s The Old Grey Whistle Test and shot music videos for artists including Tina Turner, The Police, and Alison Moyet. He shot The Specials’ ‘Ghost Town’, Queen’s ‘I Want to Break Free’ and Kylie Minogue’s ‘Wouldn’t Change a Thing’. Other promos included for Madness (‘It Must Be Love’), Fine Young Cannibals (‘Suspicious Minds’), and Rick Astley (‘Hold Me In Your Arms’). 

He moved into television drama in the early ‘80s, earning a BAFTA nomination for his work on 1987 comedy mini-series Porterhouse Blue before being invited to shoot his first narrative feature as DP. This was Welsh language comedy Coming Up Roses (1986) for director Stephen Bayly which screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes and on which a mutual colleague of Mike Leigh suggested they ought to meet. 

“I’d worked with Roger Pratt BSC on High Hopes and expected to go on working with Roger but he was busy with Terry Gilliam shooting The Fisher King,” Leigh explains. “Roger was very, very apologetic but I needed to find someone else. Working with Dick just seemed like a good idea. He was a great guy, we talked the same language and it turned out to be a great relationship.” 

The comedy Life is Sweet (1990) was the start of a hugely successful career collaboration between Leigh and Pope which spanned 12 features plus shorts and commercials. 

“Once we’d worked together once it was dead obvious we’d work together again,” Leigh says. “First of all, he’s a brilliant cinematographer and that was clear from the word ‘go’. We also shared a sense of humour, we shared a sense of cynicism and we shared taste.” 

Their next feature collaboration, Naked (1993) is arguably their most celebrated. The coruscating satire of class, power, and sexual relationships won Leigh and actor David Thewlis awards at Cannes but it’s Pope who conjures the film’s monochromatic nocturnal bleakness. 

“I go into a long period with the actors and there’s always an agreed point in the proceedings when I start to share with Dick and the designers what I think is emerging,” Leigh says. “When I did that on Naked I was able to say to Dick, ‘I think the film is kind of nocturnal, maybe monochromatic, although we knew we were shooting in colour. It’s about this guy on a solo journey and Dick was immediately on the case. The bleach bypass tests he shot were right on the button. 

 “It continued from there. Every time we made a film he absolutely tuned in on cinematically, photographically, visually, aesthetically, dramatically with exactly the right thing.” 

This includes Pope’s use of bold primary colours on the optimistic Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) and his inspired use of Super 16 film to create the postwar world of Vera Drake (2004). Leigh highlights the combination of 16mm shot handheld with 35mm shot formally to differentiate between the past and present in Career Girls (1997) and his “beautiful rendering” of the four seasons in Another Year (2010). Other highlights include the sumptuous Victorian theatre imagery of Topsy-Turvy (1999), Pope’s sensitive references in Mr. Turner (2014) to the artist’s paintings, and his bold rendering of the turbulent world of Peterloo (2018). 

What is notable about the critical acclaim accorded to Pope is that he did his best work without announcing his presence. 

“I don’t think Pope had a signature [look],” observed Matt Zoller Seitz, an editor at RogerEbert.com. “Pope seemed like the cinematography version of a character actor, giving the performance that particular film needed.” 

If there’s any aesthetic through-line in the work it relates to Pope’s “evidently unassuming intelligence about how best to serve material,” Seitz said. “He seemed to have an instinct for doing as much as he could to help a movie, a scene, or a moment without seeming as if he was trying to inappropriately spice things up or wow the audience or dazzle in some superficial or obvious way.” 

In an interview for the 2021 remaster of Naked, Pope himself noted that Leigh’s films are full of “invisible moves”.  

“People always think that the camera is locked down and doesn’t move in his films, like in the work of Ozu, but of course it does move. In the silhouette shot when Johnny is having his big rant at Brian about Nostradamus and the end of the universe, the camera is moving closer all the time into a much tighter shot, but it’s almost invisible, and you don’t realise it’s happening. That was what I tried to do – make it as invisible as possible, make it feel like you’re just being drawn in by the words, but the camera is actually moving in all the time.” 

Roger Deakins CBE ASC BSC says Pope’s legacy is one of unpretentious photography. “Naked is the epitome of that. It would have been so hard to shoot that film in those circumstances with so little money but he did it beautifully.  

“He was very much a people person. Some cinematographers have a bit of a reverential view of themselves. Dick wasn’t like that. He was more ‘get in there and just do it.’ For Dick, it was all about the story, the characters and about working with people. He loved working with crews and just loved the experience of the job. He was willing to muck in and not have special treatment.” 

 Leigh has a similar take, “He wouldn’t have been able to function as an artist – which is what he was – if he didn’t have a great sense of compassion. He absolutely got what my stories are about and he was brilliant with actors and knew how to serve their needs. That’s very important, obviously, because my films are very performance based.” 

Pope’s other work includes for Richard Linklater (Bernie, Me and Orson Welles), Christopher McQuarrie’s directorial debut (Way of the Gun), Barry Levinson’s Man of the Year, Douglas McGrath (Nicolas Nickleby), Brian Helgeland (Legend); Beeban Kidron (Swept from the Sea), Chiwetel Ejiofor (The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind), Harry Macqueen (Supernova), and Graham Moore (The Outfit). 

  When Edward Norton wanted to convey the loneliness of life in 1950s New York for his noir feature Motherless Brooklyn he turned to Pope. They had met on the set of Neil Burger’s The Illusionist (which earned Pope an Oscar nomination in 2006). 

“Dick’s talent for making the past seem visceral is what made me want to go to him,” Norton told IBC365. “I used Robert Frank and Vivian Maier photos to convey the path I wanted to go down and Dick brought the idea of Edward Hopper paintings.” 

Pope said of the project, “It’s a dream for any cinematographer to be asked to recreate fifties New York with all the visual flourishes of a noir. I was brought up on noir film. My father idolised noir actors of that era and was a number one fan of Dick Powell (whose Philip Marlowe in 1944’s Farewell My Lovely is considered definitive). That’s why he called me Richard.” 

Pope was a favourite of cinematographers, winning the coveted main prize at Camerimage in Poland no less than three times. Particularly memorable for him was a presentation of Naked at the festival’s first edition in 1993. In the audience were Sven Nykvist ASC FSF, Vittorio Storaro ASC AIC, and Vilmos Zsigmond ASC along with students from many film schools in Europe.  

“After the screening it became apparent that the students had never seen anything quite like it before,” Pope recalled to BFI curator James Bell. “They mobbed me in the auditorium then kidnapped me and took me to a smoky backroom where they demanded all I knew about everything to do with the making of the film and Mike Leigh’s method. Then at the end of the festival at the awards ceremony, the students mounted the stage and in a piece of pure agitprop, hijacked the proceedings and gave their own award to me for Naked, which is a beautiful piece I still have and treasure – a stained glass panel evoking Rosebud, the sled from Citizen Kane.” 

 

My friend, Dick  

Starting their careers around the same time, it was inevitable their paths would overlap but Pope was to become much more than a colleague to Roger Deakins CBE ASC BSC. 

“He’s probably my best friend in the business,” says Deakins. “We started together and went through the same kind of evolution.” 

They met in the late ‘70s at Solas Enterprises, a documentary filmmaking cooperative run by directors Jack Hazan and David Mingay. “I spent more time with Dick than I did with anybody else. He was working as an assistant at that time and making his way up to become a cameraman. 

“We had a lot in common even though we had very different backgrounds. He’s very much a Londoner and I’m from the West country with very different characters but we got on really well. We’d sit in the office, have a cup of tea and swap war stories.” 

When Pope landed work shooting concerts he would invite Deakins to operate a second camera. “I remember going up to Birmingham one weekend and filming The Clash with him,” Deakins recalls. 

A few years later, shooting 1984 for Mike Radford, Deakins was able to return the favour, with Pope operating second unit. When Deakins went to Kenya to shoot Mountains of the Moon (1990) for Bob Rafelson, Pope shot second unit too.  

“I knew he’d shot documentaries on the Maasai there with producer Chris Curling with whom Dick had already shot documentaries. Dick loved Kenya. He also loved just being off on his own shooting some shots for us. Once he’d finished he’d go off into the bush for days and we wouldn’t know where the hell he was but he always come back with one or two wonderful shots. 

“That was the last time we worked together, but we’ve always kept in touch. Sometimes he’d come to stay with us in Devon or catch up over dinner in London. We even ended up both going to the Academy Awards as nominees (in 2015 for Mr. Turner and Unbroken respectively). 

“We’re both very cynical about the ritual and pomposity of filmmaking which is perhaps why we got on so well. Dick had a wonderful way of undercutting all of that and not letting it get to him.” 

Deakins and his wife James describe Pope’s sense of humour as “nuts” and “left field” adding, “He was charming and funny and he had a great deal of curiosity. He was so enthusiastic and loved film. Every time he had a movie coming out we looked forward to seeing how he tackled that particular challenge.” 

Deakins adds, “I just really miss him as a friend. I don’t think it has sunk in yet.”

A perfectionist  

“He was extremely creative in terms of how he thought about light,” says Lucy Bristow ACO Assoc. BSC, who loaded on Life is Sweet and operated on Hard Truths, bookends of a career on which they paired on numerous other projects. “He could turn something very bland into something very beautiful. Dick crafted everything and was always striving to improve the shot. He was like a dog with a bone and wouldn’t leave it alone. He had incredible perfectionism.” 

When Bristow graduated from loading to operating, Pope encouraged her to go into the grade and pursue the film’s look into post. “He impressed on me the importance of understanding the whole process, including beyond the end of the shoot. He was also fantastic at making actors feel comfortable. He had a wicked sense of humour. That’s what crew and actors respond to on set.” 

Bristow also recalls working with Pope in Ghana on a tricky nine-week shoot for HBO TV movie Deadly Voyage in 1996. 

“So many things went wrong including the generator bursting into flames in the middle of the night, actors getting bitten by dogs, and the second AD getting sepsis from a fall and having to be airlifted out. The Ghanian crew felt the film was so jinxed, they even got a local healer in to bless the rest of production. Of all the films with Dick this was the most eventful as an experience.”

 

NAB Preview: Agentic AI poised to steal the show

IBC

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New imaging technologies, AI creative mates and wrestlers await visitors to Las Vegas while America’s free press is under attack. 

The spectre of Big Brother hovers over NAB. President Trump’s sustained attack on the First Amendment verbalised against MSNBC, ABC, CBS and CNN, includes a White House ban on AP for continuing to use ‘Gulf of Mexico’ and an executive order to decimate the international news organisation Voice of America.

In his pocket is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) whose chairman Brendan Carr is perpetuating an investigation into an interview aired by CBS during the presidential campaign.

CBS is accused of doctoring an interview with candidate Kamala Harris that ran on the current affairs show 60 Minutes. The full transcript and video have been handed to the FCC which is delaying a decision on whether or not it broke any rules, perhaps to hold CBS parent Paramount Global to account while its merger with Skydance Media needs FCC approval.

Meanwhile, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has urged the case to be dismissed. The NAB said in documents to the FCC on 7 March: “Despite the complaint’s focus on how the former vice president’s answer to a single question was edited, nothing here indicates, let alone demonstrates, deliberate falsification or a deliberate intent to mislead …”

It continued: “Even assuming a successful claim could be made, Congress did not grant the FCC the authority to develop and enforce its news distortion policy, and that policy also almost certainly violates the First Amendment.”

This political vendetta and the wider pressures on journalists questioning Trump’s authority hangs large over the NAB Show where leading figures from the FCC and broadcasters like CBS are present.

Choose collaboration or creative armageddon

With Vegas only a short hop from LA, there will be some Hollywood heavyweights in attendance. These include Alice Brooks and Myron Kerstein, the cinematographer and editor respectively behind musical fantasy Wicked: Part 1; Jeff Groth, editor of The Joker and Better Man; and Fenton Bailey, Co-founder at RuPaul’s Drag Race producer World of Wonder. Amazon MGM Studios’ Head of Post Production, International Features & Head of International VFX, Arturo Sedano Diaz gets his own session talking about post-production.

The biggest beast is David S. Goyer, a writer and producer specialising in sci-fi. He worked with Christopher Nolan on the Dark Knight trilogy, co-wrote and produced Batman V Superman as well as executive producing the Sandman TV series and showrunning AppleTV series Foundation. One of his current projects is the script for Guillermo del Toro’s remake of 1960’s classic Fantastic Voyage.

Goyer has his own fireside chat during which he will outline the problems facing the entertainment industry and a remedy, involving his own AI-driven company, called Incention.

“The choice before us is clear: embrace the future of collaborative creation or watch as fear of AI paralyses the industry,” declares the Incention ‘manifesto’. “Traditional IP development is broken. Valuable franchises lie dormant, waiting for major studio investment. Creative communities remain untapped. Meanwhile, AI threatens to flood the market with algorithmic slop – prioritising quantity over quality.”

He will warn of a paralysis of fear gripping Hollywood. “Executives, frozen by AI's rapid advancement, cling to old models that no longer serve creators or audiences – or their businesses! They see AI as either a complete replacement for human creativity or an enemy to be defeated. Both perspectives miss the revolutionary opportunity before us.”

Incention is backed by the a16z venture fund and built on the blockchain, meaning a creator’s work can be tracked and rewarded. The first piece of IP from the company, intended as a franchise, is a suitably sci-fi world called Emergence.

Agentic AI makes first moves

NAB will be the industry’s coming out party for Agentic AI, a form of AI that no longer relies on predefined algorithms and user instructions, but demonstrates autonomy, adaptability, and the capacity for decision-making.

“This evolution is reshaping every facet of the media landscape, from content creation and distribution to audience engagement and monetisation strategies,” says Zeenal Thakare, Sr. Vice President – Enterprise Sales Solutions Architect at Ateliere Creative Technologies.

Goyer’s Incention platform includes an AI agent designed to serve as a creative partner to help with aggregating ideas, crafting narratives, and even generating full videos.

A session run by Silicon Valley AI company TipTop Technology, asks us to envisage production meetings where avatars “step in as stand-ins, providing insights and sharing essential updates” to ensure everyone stays on track to meet deadlines.

Also debuting at NAB is a claimed “first AI-powered conversational assistant” offering design to deployment support for media workflows. This comes from qibb whose CEO Jonas Michaelis said in a release: “By adding an intelligent, conversational assistant directly to our platform, we are empowering both seasoned engineers and non-technical users to develop, refine, and oversee media workflows like never before.”

Thakare thinks the technology will give audiences new power as co-creators. “Agentic AI systems enable viewers to customise storylines, characters, and outcomes in real-time, blurring the lines between passive consumption and active participation.”

Sport imaging tech unveiled

Innovations scheduled to debut at NAB include Dream Chip Technologies’ latest miniature fixed point-of-view camera, touted as the smallest available with a global shutter. A global shutter eliminates motion artefacts, ensuring crisp imaging of action – deemed essential for applications such as goal-line technology. Weighing just 55g, including lens and stereo microphone, the AtomTwo could be worn by referees or mounted on a lightweight drone.

Not to be outdone, fellow German developer Proton will unveil the “world’s smallest slow-motion mini cam.” Also targeting sports production and featuring a global shutter, the Proton High Frame Rate (HFR) camera also captures frame rates of up to 240fps and has a C-mount lens system.

The HFR function is available in a ‘flex’ format allowing the camera head to be separated from its processing unit. This means operators can mount the head unit in tight places – such as pylon cameras in stadia – while positioning the processing unit elsewhere for cable management and stability.

Another potential sports application is the ability to enhance the most important areas of any video stream – live, in real time. In a claimed first-of-its-kind technology a new Generative Video Codec (GVC) is presented by latakoo at NAB’s Futures Park. It automatically enhances the most relevant parts of a live feed or, used manually, it can pinpoint specific areas – like a player’s foot on the goal line – "delivered in razor-sharp quality while optimising bandwidth.” 

 “You can dial it in with GVC to see what matters to you first,” says Jade Kurian, Co-Founder of latakoo, who also notes its military and police surveillance applications. “While you’re dealing with that critical video, the rest of your video will be transmitted more slowly in the background to you in perfect clarity.”

Hard to get excited by NextGen TV

ATSC 3.0 (or ‘NextGen TV’) is the broadcast standard being rolled out across the US with the aim of improving over-the-air TV. As of October 2024, just over three-quarters of the country was within reach of an ATSC 3.0 signal but there are concerns that momentum has stalled.

As reported by Jared Newman, support from TV set brands is patchy, 4K remains largely non-existent on ATSC 3.0 channels and consumers don’t seem interested in the platform’s interactive features. On the plus side, more broadcasters are focusing on HDR and Dolby Atmos is available too but the biggest issue is that broadcasters are mandated to provide simulcasts of channels over earlier generations of ATSC. While that ensures that citizens don’t get excluded from a sudden switch-off it also means that broadcasters are unable to use their spectrum as efficiently as they would like – not least for more NextGen TV functions like datacasting that could produce new revenues.

Earlier this year the NAB petitioned the FCC to do just that and put a date in the calendar for shutting down the current ATSC 1.0 and switching signals to NextGen TV. This may explain the multiplicity of sessions at NAB promoting and explaining the various aspects of the standard.

Camera to cloud continues

The transition to remote production jumped during Covid when camera-to-cloud (C2C) solutions were essential to keeping isolated teams in-sync. It has continued to evolve as more monitor-recorders able to connect over Wi-Fi or via bonded cellular solutions provide high-speed, low-latency internet on location. Devices from Atomos, for example, are integrated with C2C media asset platforms, like Adobe Frame.io, Sony Ci Media, MediaSilo and Dropbox Replay. Sundance Film Festival has been using Atomos C2C workflows for its recent coverage.

The Mavis Camera app, launching at NAB, will marry the connectivity of an iPhone with Frame.io. It is also launching Mavis C2C, a service that provides progressive uploads to Sony Ci, MediaSilo, Amazon S3 and Grass Valley Framelight X, for teams capturing content on iPhone for news and social.

A Camera to Cloud panel featuring Adobe will highlight how cloud-native solutions are being used in live sports broadcasting.

However, adoption remains limited. Many cameras still rely on recording media to cards rather than directly to accessible hard drives, restricting seamless access. Internet connectivity – especially in remote locations – can also be a challenge.

“To truly capitalise on high-speed connectivity, you need a software solution that can efficiently utilise all available bandwidth,” says Chris Fournelle of Signiant. “Without the right technology, even the fastest internet won’t guarantee the seamless, accelerated transfer of large media files needed for modern workflows.”

Ready to rumble

Having signed a $5bn deal with Netflix for global rights to the next decade of WWE, the sport’s President Nick Khan and Chief Content Officer Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque are in Vegas to talk about its adaption to live streaming and strategies for fan engagement.

The sport has been on the road with an 11-date tour of Europe including stops in Belfast, Nottingham, and the O2 before hosting “the biggest WrestleMania of all time”, at Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium in April after NAB has left town.

Also of note, AWS and Nvidia are sponsoring the esports simulator challenge on the LVCC show floor which offers you a chance to put pedal to the metal around the Las Vegas Grand Prix track.

Streamticker: The biggest streaming mergers and acquisitions of 2024

Streaming Media

article here

The 2024 edition of Streamticker, recapping the streaming industry’s most momentous mergers and acquisitions of 2023, kicked off with Disney’s gobbling up the last extant portions of Hulu, as Comcast ceded its re­maining 33% stake. But if the late-2023 deal marked only the quiet conclusion of an already-silent part­nership, the much noisier news of Jan. 6, 2025, found Disney absorbing sports-centric streamer Fubo and merging it with Hulu Live + TV.

The new merger scuttles one of the splashier deals of 2024, which found Disney/ESPN, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Fox joining forces in the megabun­dle sports streaming app Venu Sports. The deal im­mediately signaled the end of Fubo’s widely publi­cised lawsuit against Venu Sports and would appear to leave erstwhile Venu Sports partner Warner Bros. Discovery out in the cold. Disney’s Fubo acquisition (and the inevitable Fubo + Hulu + Live polynomials to follow) is projected to shake out over the next 12–18 months.

In the meantime, let’s review the done (or more nearly done) M&A deals that reshuffled the stream­ing industry in 2024.

(One high-profile merger you won’t see here is the 2-decades-in-the-making DirecTV acquisition of Dish Network and Sling TV from EchoStar. The deal was announced on Sept. 30, 2024, then nixed on Nov. 21, with the Dish bondholders’ rejection of the ex­change debt terms cited as the sticking point that scuttled it—at least for now.)

ZIXI JOINS CLEARHAVEN PARTNERS

In June 2024, Boston-based private equity firm Clearhaven Partners made an undisclosed but “sig­nificant investment” in IP video solutions provider Zixi, with both parties saying the move would enable Zixi to take growth to the next stage.

Founded in 2006, Zixi provides solutions to custom­ers such as Amazon Prime Video, AWS Elemental Media Connect, Fox, MLB, the NHL, Roku, and You­Tube TV. Clearhaven Partners is building a portfolio of enterprise and B2B software investments, includ­ing streaming solutions developer Wowza.

Analysts quoted by Zixi forecast IP-based video sys­tems to reach $8 billion a year in the next decade, with a 30% compound annual growth rate. In 2023, Zixi’s annual recurring revenue from OTT customers grew 100% year over year. Its broadcaster customers increased more than 30%, and its Software-Defined Video Platform was used to broadcast more than 1.5 million live sporting events. In addition, Zixi claims to provide the lowest total cost of ownership for large-scale IP video delivery deployments, resulting in. up to 60% lower egress costs.

In September 2024, former ThinkAnalytics boss Marc Aldrich succeeded Gordon Brooks as Zixi CEO, and Brooks moved to executive chairman. In Decem­ber, Zixi announced a partnership with sports rights acquisition and content distribution company DICE Verse for distribution of DICE Verse’s IP channels.

JW PLAYER AND CONNATIX MERGE

JW Player (JWP), a video streaming and data in­sights platform, merged with Connatix, a private eq­uity-backed video delivery and monetisation solu­tion, forming JWP Connatix. The pair believe they are better united in order to capitalise on the shift of eyeballs to CTV. A statement announcing the pact claimed it would create the largest independent glob­al video network across CTV and online video, reach­ing more than 1 billion unique users and delivering 30 billion-plus combined video plays and ad impres­sions every month.

“How and where viewers consume video is rapid­ly changing,” says David Kashak, chairman of JWP Connatix. “As a result, media companies require in­novative solutions that allow them to maximise audi­ence engagement and help optimise revenue across disparate monetisation models, whether it be adver­tising, subscriptions or commerce.”

Dave Otten, who co-founded JWP in 2008, is CEO of the combined company, which is headquartered in New York City. He says, “[W]e are bringing together two knowledgeable, and dedicated teams, whose skill-sets and values are a perfect match. We could not be more excited about this partnership and look forward to shaping the future of digital video together.”

AMAGI BUYS ARGOID AI

Amagi, an India-based CTV solutions provider, ac­quired Silicon Valley startup Argoid AI, adding the latter’s AI capabilities, engineers, and data scien­tists to the company. Amagi will integrate Argoid AI’s content recommendation algorithms and pro­gramming automation tools into its Amagi NOW and Cloudport products. One aim is to improve solutions that will help transform FAST services into person­alised streams.

“Amagi has been investing in AI/ML over the last couple of years,” says Baskar Subramanian, co-founder and CEO of Amagi. “We strongly believe in AI/ML’s pivotal role in transforming the Media and Entertainment industry, creating efficiencies, en­hanced monetisation, and a superlative viewer expe­rience. … The combined tech expertise of both com­panies will address key challenges in the streaming industry, such as content discoverability, viewer re­tention, and intelligent programming.”

MEDIAOCEAN ACQUIRES INNOVID

Mediaocean paid $500 million for fellow ad-tech company Innovid to better compete with the sector’s dominant player Google by creating an omnichan­nel ad platform across digital, social, streaming, and linear. Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Israel, Innovid went public in 2021 when it was valued at $1.3 billion, losing much of that value since, though it is expected to report $150 million in revenue for 2024.

The acquisition by Mediaocean delists Innovid from the New York Stock Exchange. Innovid will be merged into a Mediaocean subsidiary, Flashtalking, an ad server for advertisers that Mediaocean bought in 2021 also for around $500 million. Innovid CEO and found­er Zvika Netter is CEO of the new combined organi­sation, reporting to Mediaocean CEO and co-founder Bill Wise.

“There’s no other company, except for Google, that has everything in one place,” Wise told AdExchanger. “But what Google doesn’t have is neutrality and inde­pendence. … Marketers and their agencies are rec­ognising that they don’t want to rely on the world’s largest sellers to provide their buy-side ad tech.”Netter adds, “We have no problem with the walled gardens. But we believe that the technology being used to deliver and measure advertising should be separate from the media business. We’re saying either buy and sell media or be in the business of delivery, data, mea­surement, and accountability. A walled garden is not a bad thing. We work with YouTube. We work with Net­flix. We work with all the large media companies. And we deliver and measure ads across these platforms.”Mediaocean employs more than 1,000 people and generates $500 million annually. Its largest share­holder is the CVC investment fund. The acquisition was expected to close in early 2025.

DOLBY ADDS STREAMING SOLUTION AND CODEC LICENSES

Dolby Laboratories reported a strong financial performance for Q4 2024 and the full year, posting a total revenue of $1.27 billion, slightly down from $1.30 billion in 2023. In July, Dolby acquired THEO Tech­nologies, the Belgium-based provider of playback solution THEOplayer, for $55 million. Dolby plans to combine THEO products with its own Millicast solu­tion to deliver live experiences “with no perceptible difference between what you see in-person and what is streaming on your device.” The combined prod­uct range also includes THEOlive, a live-streaming solution that delivers ultralow-latency streaming at scale, and Dolby Hybrik, a cloud-based media work­flow management service.

“People want to engage with their content in real-time and have a more personal relationship with their content,” says Giles Baker, SVP of Dolby Cloud Solu­tions. “With Dolby Millicast, we’ve enabled service pro­viders to improve the audiovisual experience and offer experiences that are delivered in real-time. Add­ing THEO’s suite of products creates a comprehensive cross-platform solution for sports and entertainment companies seeking to enable the most interactive real-time digital experiences.”

A month earlier, Dolby announced the buyout of GE Licensing, an innovator in patent licensing and management, from GE Aerospace for $429 million in an all-cash transaction. GE Licensing represents multiple consumer technology companies from Tai­wan, South Korea, and China, with IP in electron­ics, smart systems, materials, and advanced manu­facturing. Overall, the transaction will comprise a portfolio of more than 5,000 patents, including foun­dational patents in video codecs, such as HEVC and VVC, and audio compression technologies, such as a patent for audio-on-demand communication and telecommunication-related technologies.

“We are pleased with the progress we made in fis­cal 2024,” says Kevin Yeaman, president and CEO of Dolby Laboratories. “As we enter 2025, we have strong momentum with Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision, our imaging patent portfolio has got stronger with the GE Licensing acquisition, and we are excited about our opportunity with Dolby.io, which is well positioned to provide real time interactive experiences for sports and entertainment.”

The company’s licensing revenue, which makes up the bulk of its business, is expected to range from $305 million to $335 million in Q1 2025.

EVS BUYS MOG TECHNOLOGIES

EVS bought Portugal-based MOG Technologies to enhance its file-based ingest and transcoding capa­bilities for live and near-live production workflows. “With a team of 50 based in Porto, the acquisition grants EVS access to a pool of highly skilled talent,” says EVS.

MOG Technologies generates an annual revenueof approximately €4 million (about $4.1 million). EVS CEO Serge Van Herck points to MOG’s software-defined ingest capabilities and transcoding features for on-prem and cloud and how these fit with EVS’s Balanced Computing strategy, which is evident in products like MediaCeption.

Additionally, EVS spent €3 million (about $3.1 mil­lion) for a minority stake in TinkerList, a Belgian company aiming to make live broadcasting more intuitive, reliable, and productive. TinkerList ’s prod­uct Cuez is a web application and automation sys­tem that’s designed to connect with a variety of pro­duction devices.

Erik Hauters, CEO of TinkerList, comments, “We are happy to have the means and the support of EVS to achieve our vision, closing the gap between the writer’s room and the technical broadcasting envi­ronment. This investment will allow us to further extend the scope of our application to increase its relevance across a wider set of productions, while maintaining the same level of simplicity in usage. The strengthened partnership wil help us to expand globally, thanks to EVS’s direct and indirect world­wide footprint. Moreover, this investment from a sol­id broadcast leader demonstrates the sustainability of our company.”

AKAMAI ACQUIRES EDGIO ASSETS

In September 2024, CDN provider Edgio filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In November, Akamai ac­quired select assets held by the company. Edgio listed $379 million in assets and $369 million in liabilities, according to court papers. At the time, its network comprised 300 points of pres­ence (PoPs) worldwide, more than 7,000 ISP intercon­nections, and more than 275Tbps of global capacity, serving around 900 customers.

Akamai was the winning bidder of the assets, which included customer contracts from Edgio’s businesses in security and content delivery and non-exclusive license rights to Edgio’s entire patent portfolio. No assets related to the Edgio network were acquired by Akamai. Dan Rayburn noted in a December 2024 LinkedIn post that investment firm and Edgio debtor Lynrock won the assets for Uplynk and Interdigital, some of Edgio’s patents.

Edgio was only formed in 2022 after Limelight Net­works acquired Edgecast from Yahoo and Apollo Global Management, with the combined company re­branding that year. Between 2013 and 2016, Edgecast was a subsidiary of Verizon. Verizon acquired Yahoo! in 2017 and merged it with its Verizon Digital Media Services business (including the CDN service) to form Oath and later Verizon Media.

In 2023, Lumen Technologies and StackPath quit the CDN business, selling their enterprise custom­ers to Akamai.

AVID ENHANCES NEWS WITH WOLFTECH

Avid acquired Wolftech Broadcast Solutions, a de­veloper of news planning, production, and publish­ing tools. Wolftech was founded in 2011 as a startup within TV 2 Norway, a broadcaster that has incubated companies such as Vizrt, Mosart Media Lab, Vimond, and Electric Friends. It started out working with live video production tools, then in 2013 was tasked by TV 2 to develop a better planning tool for news. The first version of Wolftech News launched in 2014, and its first customer was VRT in Belgium.

Wolftech LIVE is the company’s web-based newsroom control system that allows broadcasters to build and broadcast news, sports, or entertainment shows. It is integrated into the Wolftech ecosystem and is designed to deliver a seamless transition from planning to pro­duction.

Other vendor partnerships with Wolftech in­clude AWS, Adobe, LiveU, Vidispine, and Marquis. Avid has retained the Wolftech brand and will integrate the tools into Avid MediaCentral. Avid CEO Wellford Dil­lard says, “Wolftech is unquestionably on the leading edge of where the industry is going, and this acquisi­tion demonstrates Avid’s commitment to transform news, sports, and live production workflows.”

ATELIERE ACQUIRES AGILE LIVE

Ateliere Creative Technologies, which describes it­self as a generative AI media software solutions com­pany, bought Agile Live, a live TV production platform from Spanish developer Agile Content. Agile Live is claimed to slash live production costs by up to 70% with technologies such as proxy video editing.

Rebranded Ateliere Live, the software platform enables production editing, mixing, graphics, and effects for REMI workflows. The company explains, “In an Ateliere Live production pipeline, video stays in the GPU until just prior to distribution, instead of being repeatedly encoded and decoded through a chain of video processing steps. This results in a sub­stantially lower environmental footprint than tradi­tional solutions that maintain the ‘serial processing steps’ architecture.”

Agile Live customers include Sveriges Television (SVT), whose head of production development, Den­nis Buhr, says, “Our goal is to lower the technical and operational cost per produced hour to half or less of current levels, and we are excited about collaborat­ing with Ateliere to further enhance the reach and capabilities of the system.”

Dan Goman, CEO and founder of Ateliere Creative Technologies, says, “With this acquisition, we are revo­lutionising the live production content industry to deliv­er enhanced real-time content directly to consumers.”

MEDIAGENIX BUYS SPIDEO METADATA

Mediagenix, which provides SaaS-based solutions for content strategy, content value management, and scheduling, acquired Spideo, a specialist in content recommendations. “The acquisition aligns with an acceleration in streaming and digital content con­sumption, whilst effectively tackling complex microsegmentation,” Mediagenix explains. It highlights the importance of metadata, and that a single “source of truth” for all content metadata “is rapidly becom­ing essential for media organisations to effectively monetise their catalog across platforms. …”

Spideo generates 2 billion recommendations from 120 million users a month. Integrating its technology into Mediagenix software is said to deliver improved semantic metadata enrichment, content discover­ability, smart curation, and scheduling automation.

Fabrice Maquignon, CEO of Mediagenix, says, “Content discovery and personalisation are crucial to reducing churn, boosting engagement, and driv­ing monetisation. … [I]ntegrating Spideo’s cutting-edge solutions … allows us to tap into new market segments and better support media companies in realising their strategic business goals.”

Spideo customers include Bouygues Telecom, Canal+, France Télévisions, Globo, Sky+, and Tele­visa. Mediagenix customers include AMC Networks, TelevisaUnivision, and A&E Networks.

Earlier in 2024, the Belgium-based Mediagenix expanded into the U.S. to tap demand for FAST and VOD ad solutions. It opened a U.S. headquarters in Miami and acquired (from an undisclosed source) a media program management tool widely used by broadcast networks and cable companies. As part of the transaction, Mediagenix acquired 55 new cus­tomers and 11 employees from the unnamed partner, which it described as the “market leader in broad­cast inventory and revenue workflow management.” The newly acquired technology was created by Mediagenix and introduced into the U.S. market nearly 2 decades ago via that partner.

Emmanuel Müller, Mediagenix’s managing direc­tor for the Americas, says, “With this strategic acqui­sition and market expansion, Mediagenix plans to fill the growing void in the U.S. broadcast industry: true automation. The acquisition of this reference tech­nology anchors our position as a leading provider of content strategy and scheduling solutions world­wide, allowing us to directly engage with broadcast and cable networks looking to expand and monetise offerings in FAST and VOD.”

ACCEDO BUYS EASEL TV

In March 2024, Swedish OTT solutions provider Ac­cedo acquired Easel TV, a U.K.-based rival, to bring both companies’ SaaS platforms under one roof. Ac­cedo CEO Michael Lantz says that Easel TV “has done a fantastic job in establishing themselves on the mar­ket,” adding, “We believe that we will be stronger to­gether as we continue to innovate in this market.”The Easel TV brand will be phased out. Easel TV clients include NBCUniversal, Sky, and TiVo. Acce­do customers include Deutsche Telekom, ITV, Globo, Hallmark, Bloomberg, and Tata Play. Accedo recently launched a Quality as a Managed Service offering, allowing streaming companies to outsource quality assurance testing and app certification with original equipment manufacturers to achieve cost efficiency, improve QoS, and fight churn.

OUTBRAIN ACQUIRES TEADS FOR $1 BILLION

Outbrain, a company that uses AI to drive content recommendations and performance online, agreed to acquire Teads, an omnichannel video platform, from Altice in a $1 billion deal. Merging with Teads gives Outbrain access to TV and video publishers to tap into the growing CTV market. Teads provides publishers with a range of ad formats, most notably its outstream video, alongside creative optimisation and interactive features for CTV.

The combined company is expected to generate more than $1.7 billion in ad spend this year, with the trans­action expected to close in Q1 2025, subject to stock­holder and regulatory approvals. The two companies said the acquisition will create one of the largest adver­tising platforms for the open internet, mobile, and CTV, bringing together 20,000 direct advertisers with a base of 10,000 premium media environments. The combined platform will cover more than 50 markets, according to the firms, reaching more than 2 billion consumers per month. Outbrain CEO David Kostman will be CEO of the merged entity, with Teads co-CEOs Bertrand Quesada and Jeremy Arditi serving as co-presidents.

“This is a transformative transaction to establish a true end-to-end, full-funnel platform for the open internet,” says Kostman. “The combination of our highly complementary offerings accelerates our vision to become the preferred partner to deliver meaningful brand outcomes across premium, qual­ity media environments—while scaling the industry-leading offerings Teads is known for.”

Altice had been looking to sell Teads for some time, after withdrawing its plans to take the company public in 2021. Altice was then ex­pected to offload most of its media assets after accruing €60 billion (about $61.7 billion) in debt and facing a fraud investigation in Portugal.

In October 2023, reports said that Altice was seeking around €3 billion (about $3.1 billion) for Teads. But the $1 billion price tag still ex­ceeds the $307 million Altice paid for Teads in 2017. According to Video Week, “[T]he acqui­sition represents an opportunity for Outbrain to expand into more premium environments, particularly CTV, seeking to work with more upper-funnel advertisers.”

The merger is subject to approval after a U.K. government investigation into whether the transaction will result “in a substantial less­ening of competition” within the U.K. market.

WALMART + VIZIO = STREAMING AGGREGATOR

Walmart’s February 2024 $2.3 billion purchase of smart TV maker VIZIO and its SmartCast operat­ing system was intended to create a more potent ri­val to Amazon’s booming ad business. Walmart’s ad sales are still a fraction of Amazon’s, but the bricks-and-mortar retail giant leads in daily grocery sales.
Walmart’s ads business grew 28% to $3.4 billion last year, but this makes up less than 1% of its total sales. Variety even suggests that Walmart is perhaps the only player that can rival Amazon as the all-in-one dealer of the streaming market. “Walmart is well on the way to going toe-to-toe with Amazon as the ‘ev­erything store’ of streaming,” writes Variety’s Tyler Aquilina, “with its own hardware, connected TV OS, subscription marketplace, and, if not its own pro­prietary SVOD, at least a high-profile partnership to offer one.”

SmartCast has more than 18 million active accounts and is included in every VIZIO TV set. It connects with other services like Apple Airplay and personal assis­tants like Alexa.

“Longer term, Walmart can also use the Vizio plat­form to develop more of its own entertainment con­tent—something it might link with the Walmart+ membership scheme,” notes Neil Saunders, manag­ing director of GlobalData. Walmart U.S. EVP and chief revenue officer Seth Dallaire says that combining VIZIO with its media business, Walmart Connect, “would be impactful as we redefine the intersection of retail and entertainment.”

SIMPLY TV ACQUIRES INFLOW MEDIA

Denmark’s Simply TV, a provider of content discov­ery and metadata, bought InFlow Media in July 2024, claiming to form Europe’s leading metadata company.

This is the second acquisition made by Simply TV, following the purchase of the Dutch metadata special­ist GVIDI in 2022. InFlow Media, formed out of Universum Norway and Ritzau Mediaservice Denmark in 2019, develops EPG metadata and supports the transition to time-shift viewing, personal video recorders, and VOD in the Nordics. Simply TV was founded by Daniel Rühmann and Morten Trolle, who previously launched EPG Sys­tems, which was acquired by Gracenote in 2013.

BENDING SPOONS BUYS BRIGHTCOVE

Brightcove, the Technology and Engineering Emmy-winning video platform vendor, was sold to app devel­oper Bending Spoons for $233 million in November 2024. Founded in 2004 with a video player, Brightcove expanded into full online video services and a mone­tisation suite for clients such as the BBC, Showtime, AMC Networks, and the LPGA. It went public in 2012 but has faced challenges of late, reporting a net loss of $3 million for Q3 2024.

This was Milan-headquartered Bending Spoons’ sixth acquisition in 2024, following those of file-sharing platform WeTransfer, digital publishing platform Issuu, live-streaming app StreamYard, app maker Mosaic Group, and Meetup, a social network with 60 million members. In 2022, it acquired note-taking software firm Evernote. Bending Spoons is valued at more than $2.5 billion and is reportedly planning an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange.

SEEDTAG ACQUIRES BEACHFRONT

Seedtag, a specialist in contextual advertising, ac­quired Beachfront, a U.S.-based sell-side ad platform for CTV and streaming. Since the announcement in June 2024, Beachfront’s technology, inventory, and ex­pertise in CTV advertising has been incorporated into Seedtag’s contextual ad solutions. Seedtag recently launched Contextual TV in the U.S., an offering that harnesses AI-based network dynamics.

Jorge Poyatos, co-CEO and co-founder of Seedtag, says, “With the acquisition of Beachfront, we will fur­ther enrich our unique Contextual TV solution by incorporating a native platform into our stack, add­ing additional signals to our AI, and expanding our publisher partnerships.”