International sports rights agency Spring Media has moved to diversify its operations by acquiring a majority stake in Sportacentrs, a Latvia-based sports media house.
Sportacentrs incorporates international sports production company PolarHD, Latvian free-to-air television channel Sportacentrs and Sportacentrs.com, Latvia’s biggest sports news website.
The acquisition follows a lengthy cooperation between the two companies. Tobias Osmund, chief executive of Spring Media, said: “The vertical integration of a production company is an important part of Spring Media’s strategic plan for growth as we continue to bring outstanding value to our clients and partners.”
Torsten Billing, partner at Spring Media, added: “With Sportacentrs we now have the capability to offer up to 10 simultaneous productions across Europe, in a cost efficient manner with computer based production units and OCR technology for graphics and statistics.
“This will be of great benefit for Spring Media and the sports and events we work with. In addition we see great potential for development of Sportacentrs’ DTT channel and digital consumer media products as we strengthen them with Spring Media’s catalogue of sports rights.”
PolarHD has international clients including the International Basketball Federation (Fiba), European Cycling Union (UEC) and International Floorball Federation.