FuboTV wrapped up its $190 million acquisition of Molotov earlier than expected and now has in place an important piece for its international strategy.
Molotov is a virtual MVPD based in France that also operates Mango, an ad-supported video-on-demand streaming service. FuboTV said that Molotov has nearly four million monthly active users in France across its two services as of September 2021.
FuboTV is expecting synergies between its and Molotov’s technology and teams, and said that the company’s streaming platform was designed to be localized for new markets and languages, facilitating more efficient launches in additional countries as fuboTV considers expanding its global footprint.
“With today’s closing, fuboTV has acquired a very talented team and an innovative tech stack that can help accelerate our development in the U.S. with a judicious deployment of minimal incremental investment dollars. At the same time, this combination will provide technology to grow Molotov’s business model. Over the long term, we believe the synergies of the combined company will give us operating leverage to build a scalable global platform as we continue on our mission to deliver the world’s leading interactive sports and entertainment live TV experience,” said fuboTV CEO David Gandler in a statement.
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FuboTV currently operates in the U.S., Canada and Spain, where it launched in 2018. Molotov operates in France, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Cameroon and expects to launch soon in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The company also operates in Morocco through a partnership with Maroc telecom.
FuboTV plans to use Molotov’s freemium model, which has a free tier for user growth and works to upsell customers to premium add-on channel packages, to promote its own international growth while using its marketing technology to accelerate Molotov subscriptions.
Molotov will continue to be based in Paris and led by JeanDavid Blanc, who has been named president and will report directly to Gandler. The company’s approximately 100 employees will stay onboard and fuboTV plans to further expand the product and engineering team in Paris.
This is the second acquisition for fuboTV this month. Last week, it closed its deal for Edisn.ai, an AI-based video recognition technology provider.