PRESS: Russia’s Gazprom-Media merges video service with distributor

MOSCOW, Feb 4 (PRIME) -- Russian holding Gazprom-Media has agreed to buy 33.3% in Pladform, a big distributor of legal content in the Internet, by merging it with its own video service Rutube, business daily Kommersant reported Thursday, referring to a media market source.

The merged company will be renamed Ruform, and it will manage Rutube. Ruform will be headed by Armen Gulinyan, founder and general director of Pladform, and chairman of the board of directors will be Vadim Fedotov, head of the digital sub-holding of Gazprom-Media, the source said.

Ruform will work on the video mass market under the Rutube brand, and the Pladform name will be kept for Internet floors and rights’ owners.

Fedotov confirmed that Gazprom-Media had filed an application for the deal to the Federal Antimonopoly Service. Gulinyan also confirmed the fact of negotiations.

According to Kartoteka.ru, Gulinyan directly owns 12.5% in Pladform, and the remainder is held by Cyprus-based Relidor Developments Ltd., through which the service is co-owned by Ivan Tavrin, general director of mobile operator MegaFon, and online games maker Innova.

“We are expanding a distribution network of Gazprom-Media’s content and ensure its maximum availability on Internet floors, including Yandex and Kinopoisk, Rambler, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki,” Fedotov said.

Gulinyan said that Pladform, in its turn, gets access to the licensed content of Gazprom-Media, which “occupies a significant share of video views in the Internet.”

A source close to the deal said that the companies plan to create the country’s biggest video platform, a rival to YouTube. Gazprom-Media’s TNT TV channel produces a huge part of the Russian-speaking video and its monetization could be tangible, the source said.

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