On the heels of a first quarter loss of $58.7 million that it announced in mid-May, JumpTV has announced that it will be merging operations with NeuLion, a Plainview, NY-based startup that specializes in online-to-TV streaming technology.
Founded in 2004, NeuLion, a private corporation based in Plainview, New York, provides web-based IPTV services to leading sports customers such as the National Hockey League and the International Fight League. NeuLion also delivers a Set-top box IPTV servicen to premier international customers such as ABS-CBN (Philippines), KylinTV (China) and Globecast (France).
“Today, JumpTV is one the largest broadcasters in the world of sports and international content over the Internet,” said G. Scott Paterson, Executive Chairman for JumpTV, in an interview with Portada. “We believe our merger with NeuLion will result in the combined company being the #1 in the world.”
Ten Million and Counting…
JumpTV has approximately 10 million unique visitors per month, of which a good percentage consume Spanish-language content. “JumpTV is a hybrid business model in that we have content (Hispanic and otherwise) available on a subscription basis and also a tremendous amount of content that free to consumer which is advertising supported,” Paterson tells Portada. “Premium content such as the South American World Cup Qualifiers (beginning in a few days) plus television channels such as America TV from Peru and TV Chile are all subscription content. In addition, we offer selected sports and television content free to consumers.
JumpTV also provides web based and IPTV solutions to content owners for which they provide fees and obtain revenue sharing. “The combined JumpTV-NeuLion merger will offer content owners an unparalleled comprehensive suite of web services to access multiplatforms including the PC, the television through set top boxes and mobile devices.
The new company, whose new name has not yet been decided upon, will specialize in sports and ethnic programming, specifically targeting Hispanic, Arabic, Chinese and Filipino audiences, combining JumpTV’s Latin and sports focus with NeuLion’s multicultural and religious programming.
Asset Retention…
JumpTV has decided to retain certain assets of its content delivery network (CDN) and international channels, which it will leverage within the combined company structure and multi-platform IPTV offering. JumpTV previously disclosed that it intended to divest its CDN and international channels.
In March, 2008, comScore ranked JumpTV as the #1 most engaging website among those in the sports video category with a recorded 40.4 minutes per viewer per month in the U.S. Additionally, JumpTV viewers watched approximately 20 million minutes of online sports video in the U.S. in March ranking it as #4 in the Sports Video Sites category overall.
“We are not trying to be a destination site,” Paterson tells Portada. “We have a destination site, but we are very comfortable distributing our content to other sites as well, which presently include Terra, AOL Latino, QuePasa, Batanga.”
In addition, JumpTV has branched-out into handling e-commerce for sports leagues and specific teams, powering online shops and even charity donation drives.
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