LOS ANGELES (AP) – Could the next “House of Cards” be coming to your phone?
That’s what Verizon hopes now that it’s paid more than $100 million for a piece of the online-video studio AwesomenessTV. It’s the latest attempt by a maturing, mainstream corporation to find growth in non-traditional video programming that can reach younger audiences on smartphones and tablets.
In 2014, for instance, Disney acquired online-video producer Maker Studios for a tab that eventually hit $625 million. An AT&T joint venture bought Fullscreen, a similar production company, for an undisclosed sum the same year. Hollywood’s DreamWorks Animation bought AwesomenessTV in 2013, paying a total of $113 million after the studio hit promised deal targets.
In some ways, these arrangements are modern – albeit much smaller – versions of classic media deals struck by companies anxious to draw bigger audiences. Think Twitter buying the rights to Thursday Night Football, Time Warner Cable doing likewise with Los Angeles Dodgers baseball, or cable company Comcast buying NBC Universal.
The investment gives Verizon a 24.5 percent stake in AwesomenessTV and more original video for its Go90 streaming service, which launched in September. It will also help it make use of its $4.4 billion purchase of AOL last year, which gave Verizon a new capability to deliver ads on top of video.