Baofeng Technology and financial services firm Everbright Securities have announced that they have acquired a majority stake in MP & Silva, an Italian-owned media rights agency.
Shanghai Jin Xin Fund, as part of Baofeng and Everbright’s partnership, has acquired a 65 percent stake in the world’s leading media rights group. According to the Financial Times, this deal is worth more than US$1 billion.
Beijing Baofeng Technology Co Ltd is an Internet video company that develops and operates a number of software products which include the 'storm' PC, 'storm wireless' application (APP) and 'BFVCenter' video browser.
Why MP&Silva?
MP & Silva is an international media rights company based in London, with 20 offices around the globe. The company manages sports TV rights for a range of international sporting events and distributes around 10,000 hours of programming to some 500 broadcasters globally. The company's portfolio includes FIFA World Cup rights, senior European football leagues, “Grand Slam” tennis, motor racing, handball, baseball, volleyball, boxing and the Asian Games.
MP & Silva shareholders also welcome this important partnership: “Baofeng and Everbright will help us to develop our business and strengthen further our global footprint.”
It is not the first time MP&Silva has co-operated with a Chinese Internet corporation. Back in 2012 LeSports acquired the broadcasting rights of Serie A and Ligue 1 for three seasons through partnership with MP&Silva. Last year the two sides reached an agreement, allowing LeSports to acquire more world-leading Sports IPs including the media rights mentioned above and many others. Thanks to the partnership with MP&Silva LeSports is able to provide more than 1800 hours live streaming broadcasts of football events for users every season.
It is obvious that MP&Silva has been keeping an eye on the Chinese market for a long time. According to the Memo signed by Baofeng Technology and MP&Silva, Baofeng will take advantage of its leading position in the entertainment industry and MP&Silva will look to its influence in the global sports media to foster their development in China and beyond.
Applying Virtual Reality (VR) in sports industry
Both sides put emphasis on Virtual Reality(VR). 2016 is regarded as the first year of VR. There is no doubt that VR will play an important part in events-spectating in the near future. According to a report from Goldman Sachs, the revenue from live VR broadcasts will be US$750m by 2020 and the figure will rise to 4.1b after five years.
For companies with VR technology and products, shortage of content can be a barrier and for companies with events broadcasting rights, technologies are in desperate need of this. Against this background, MP&Silva and Baofeng Technology compensate each other on this weakness.