Rightster Acquires Two More Video Companies, Chad Hurley Now Advisor

Rightster, the U.K. video distribution and monetisation startup largely backed by angel investors, has been on an acquisition roll. It’s now acquired Viral Spiral, which specialises in social video management, licensing and brand engagement and it’s acquiring Base79, one of the largest YouTube partners outside North America. To achieve the above it’s announced the placing of 75 million new ordinary shares in order to raise £42 million at a price of 56 pence per share.

Last year Rightster acquired European branded content marketing platform and movie trailer distributor, Preview Networks, for an undisclosed sum. This was to bring major movie distributors, media agencies and brands onto its books and bolster its global YouTube multi-channel network (MCN) footprint. At that point it had raised $25 million largely from angel investors.

The acquisition of Base79 is for a price up to £50 million in shares. The acquisition of outstanding shares in Viral Spiral is for £4.1 million in cash and shares.

Patrick Walker, of Base79 and a former Senior Director of YouTube EMEA will be joining Rightster’s executive team. Additionally, Chad Hurley, former CEO and co-founder of YouTube, is joining the Rightster Advisory Committee.

The acquisitions would make Rightster the fourth-biggest YouTube MCN by audience in North America and the largest outside North America, said the company.

Obviously this means a lot of scale for the company and its customers, as the acquisitions more than double Rightster’s existing number of customers, adding over 2,000 YouTube channels. After the acquisitions, Rightster’s aggregated traffic will increase from 371 million video views per month to 1.1 billion, it said.

Charlie Muirhead, founder and CEO of Rightster, says the acquisitions will be “transformational for Rightster” as they more than double the number of content partners and put it past the 1 billion video views per month milestone.

The full release is below.