Independent distributor Cinedigm said it hit a five-year high for digital content sales during its fiscal first quarter, which the company attributed to COVID-19 stay-at-home orders.
“We have been laser focused on aggregating and distributing thousands of titles to the key streaming platforms like Netflix, Apple and Amazon given the huge demand for independent premium content we are seeing from both existing and newly launched platforms,” said Yolanda Macias, executive vice president at Cinedigm, in a statement. “All of the existing and new streaming platforms need a high volume of fresh digital content to keep pace competitively and to keep up with the record cord cutting happening around the globe. As expected in this environment, we generated over an estimated 34% year-over-year growth in our digital content sales in the first quarter of Cinedigm’s fiscal year, which ended on June 30, 2020.”
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Cinedigm said its digital growth is being driven primarily by the digital transactional space, led by Amazon and Apple. The company said Amazon, Apple, Vudu, Google, InDemand EST, Hoopla, Microsoft, Sony and Fandango generated their strongest performance levels in history with Cinedigm with more than 60% growth year over year.
Cinedigm said its educational content has also seen strong performance. The company’s partnership with Hoopla reached first quarter year over year growth of 70%, and that its content on Overdrive reached first quarter year over year growth of 115%. Cinedigm said it also reached a new business deal with Kanopy, a college library digital platform.
Cinedigm distributes film and TV content to more than 70 digital platforms in more than 180 territories. Branded content includes co-productions with Hallmark, ZDF, Konami Cross Media, the NFL and the NHL.
Cinedigm said it recently closed eight new AVOD deals with companies including Redbox, Google and Fuse, and that is has five more expansion deals in the works.