Blog: investment

Disney announced it is investing $1.5 billion into Epic Games. The same announcement talks about a creation of an “ expansive and open games and entertainment universe connected to Fortnite ”. This move makes sense for Disney on several levels and is perhaps one of the most impactful games-related moves for Disney’s overall cultural relevance, engagement, monetisation capabilities, and profitability.

Sony continues investing in Epic Games Although Microsoft stole the headlines with its acquisition of Activision early this year, Sony is certainly not just standing on the side-lines. Last week, it announced a significant $1 billion investment into Epic Games.

Sony has made a strategic investment of $250 million to acquire a minority stake in Epic Games. According to Venture Beat , Sony will own 1.4% of the company, valuing Epic Games at $17.86 billion. While the size of the deal does not afford Sony any direct legal control, it opens up a number of doors and is an important step in its cross-entertainment strategy.

Italian football league Serie A is attracting suitors for an equity share, following a €3 billion ($3.4 billion) ‘tentative offer’ made by Bain Capital for 25% of the league. This opened up competition with equity rival CVC Capital Partners, which offered €2.

Sports streaming insurgent DAZN has announced last week it plans to inform rights holders of its intent to defer its payments of rights fees for any content not yet delivered (i.e. postponed / cancelled games) during this pandemic-enforced freeze on live sports.

In last week’s Take Five I highlighted a Vox story which reported that over the last year the number of companies using terms like ‘tech’ or technology’ in their documents is down 12%. This is an early indicator of a much more fundamental concept – we may have already reached peak in the tech sector, the business sector that has driven the fourth industrial revolution.

Streaming has driven such a revenue renaissance within the major record labels that the financial markets are now falling over themselves to work out where they can invest in the market, and indeed whether they should.

For much of 2016 it looked nailed on that Spotify would IPO in 2017 and that the recorded music industry would move onto its next chapter, for better or for worse. The terms of Spotify’s $1 billion debt raise (which mean that Spotify pays an extra 1% on its 5% annual interest payments every six months beyond its previously agreed IPO date) suggest that Spotify was thinking the same way too.

Snap Inc, the parent company of messaging app Snapchat, have hired Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley for a seemingly imminent IPO. In addition to being one of the first app generation unicorns (alongside Spotify and Uber) to go public, the company is doing so at a time when fellow social media giant Twitter is in the process of selling itself, having seemingly been stalled by acquisition discussions with Disney, Google and Salesforce.