Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) has acquired Turkish streamer BluTV.
The U.S. media large already had a 35% stake within the eight-year-old streamer together with content material offers in place, and has upped stake to 100%. Today’s information builds on WBD boss David Zaslav’s declaration in the course of the firm’s Q3 outcomes name that it might be allocating capital in the direction of progress initiatives all over the world.
BluTV launched in 2016 in Turkey, expanded to MENA in 2018 and in 2021 partnered with Discovery+ as Discovery (previous to the WBD merger) took a 35% stake. That partnership deepened earlier this 12 months when HBO content material akin to Game of Thrones and The Last Of Us, and children channels Cartoon Network and Cartoonito had been added to BluTV.
Jamie Cooke, WBD’s General Manager overseeing Turkey, the Middle East and CEE, mentioned Turkey had “been an important investment territory for us for over 20 years.”
“The acquisition of BluTV brings Turkey’s first local SVoD player into our portfolio,” he added. “The combination of compelling Turkish content and a broad range of the best international series and shows from WBD is an unbeatable recipe to be locally relevant and successful.”
BluTV CEO Denis Şaşmaz Oflaz added: “As Turkey’s leading local subscription video platform, we are proud that our steady growth since day one has made us a part of one of the largest media companies in the world.”
The acquisition coming within the quiet post-Christmas week might mark the beginning of an especially busy 12 months for WBD. Just previous to Christmas, a bombshell assembly between Zaslav and Paramount Global boss Bob Bakish was reported and could possibly be a precursor to a merger between the 2 giants, whereas the corporate continues to be making strategic modifications as a result of Warner merger.