Thanks for analysing how I have lost objectivity in all my posts. Unfortunately my aim is not to be objective but to put down what I am thinking - whether it pleases yourself or the main stream zombies or not.
You say this is good news, I say this is crap news and use the same numbers to try prove its level of trash.
Make we dey watch…
The spare no-BS stance, yes. I actually check-in on @tola 's posts per availability. But when it fails to acknowledge all the angles, or takes a hard swipe at, off open speculations. Its hard not to wonder if there’s a personal matter involved.
I could also speculate aside how this is truly an awesome opportunity for Iroko to double her worth in the coming years, with a strategic partner like CANAL+, flipping the thousands of titles they have for French subs is easily worth multiples of this current deal.
At any rate this is a northward shift. How far north will all be speculations, even from Jason himself.
If Jason is done with his wild experimentations, I believe this should be enough to keep them singing till the rain comes.
Tola considering that iroko bought most of its library rights for less than 3,000 per film, they have made out on this deal especially when such an opportunity may very well not exist again with netflix coming in, with increased telco interest and with dtt. The next producer is going to be smarter about how his film is distributed online and will demand a greater share of profits. Moreover content gets stale fast and loses value. Michael jacksons thriller video may have sold millions in the 1980s but in 2016 compare its views on youtube to any of rihanna or katy perrys videos. So while Iroko may have 4,000 films in its catalog its debatable how much of that is quality content or films people want to see in 2016.
For now iroko meets canal pluses needs and for iroko it bails them out of the deep money sucking pit they dug for themselves in trying to build their own mobile distribution platform in a continent where mobile data is highly expensive and incomes are low.
I am sure their VCs are sleeping easier now knowing a large chunk of iroko is held by a multi billion dollar conglomerate. Irokos workers should be happy that their jobs are safe for at least the next couple years. For entrepreneurs like jason and gotter who undoubtedly put their hearts into this it buys time to experiment with their mobile vod vision and studio production with the comfort of knowing that a big paycheck is backing them up.
Folks, read the wording of the press release carefully. The actual cash in the mix is not substantially more than the $8m they raised last time. By doing some creative math, they are able to announce a $19m raise, suggesting that they have seriously upped the round, when the truth is that they haven’t been able to grow considerable value after seeing more than $20m in total inflows to date. That’s the REAL story here.