Spring Media has agreed a deal to acquire Fanseat, a global sports streaming service created by Finnish telco Elisa, with the company stating the move completes its transformation into a truly full-service agency.
Spring will continue to run Fanseat under its current structure and management team. The agency has acquired the full business including transfer of the core management team, its rights portfolio, registered customers and brand names.
Fanseat serves a cumulative audience of over 200,000 from 100 countries, with 4,000 events and 10,000 hours of content aired live on an annual basis.
The platform offers 20 different sports but specialises in football, ice hockey and basketball through agreements with domestic leagues and federations in France, Denmark, Lithuania and Finland.
Spring Media chief executive Tobias Osmund said: “The acquisition of Fanseat is a natural step in Spring Media’s growth strategy. It fits well with our recent acquisitions of Latvian media house and production company Sportacentrs and digital platform provider StayLive.
“We see obvious synergies merging the knowledge and infrastructure of StayLive with the Fanseat service. Spring Media is now a truly full-service agency able to offer rightsholders production, global licensing, digital platform services and now also a direct-to-consumer channel. We will invest in both content and technical expertise to further develop the Fanseat customer experience and offering.”
Jean-Maël Gineste, managing director at Fanseat, added: “Created in 2015, Fanseat has grown quickly and lived up to all expectations and targets set by its founders Elisa.
“The digital sports channel has customers in more than 100 countries with France as its largest market. Under Spring Media we have an owner with the ability to further develop our service, both in terms of sports content and in terms of technical service quality to our fans and partners.”