Russian media holding Gazprom-Media is not satisfied with financial figures of the owned online assets.
As Kommersant reported with reference to its informers, the situation with online movie theatre Now.ru still remains unclear. And a minority co-owner All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company is not satisfied with Zoomby that is rapidly losing its audience and wants to reimburse its debt via courts. The holding relies on its leading and more successful video hosting RuTube.
Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company wants VebTV which manages the video service Zoomby to compensate via the courts the debt in the amount of RUR 46 million and fines in the amount of RUR 7 million. As it was noted in the publication, the media holding’s debt arose because of use the content in 2012. It should be noted that the service is owned by Gazprom-Media for 73.75 %, the remaining shares belong to All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company structures.
According to SPARK-Interfax, Zoomby video service bears financial losses: with the revenue of RUR 50.68 million its losses amount to RUR 30.5 million.
The second online movie theatre Now.ru which is also owned by Gazprom-media will likely also be closed. As the Kommersant’s talker said, all this is coming but it still exists. Financial results were not disclosed by Now.ru.
All hopes are relied on RuTube, the largest video service that belongs to media holding, because its market position is significantly better than the other online movie theaters owned by Gazprom-Media, as Kommersant’s informer told. For example, after almost six years of work Zoomby’s figures returned to the level of the first months after the launch, and the audience significantly decreased. According to TNS Russia, the number of users visiting the site did not exceed 1.01 million in June 2016, while their number in the same period of 2015 was 7.33 million, and 9.46 million in 2014. However, the number of RuTube’s visitors decreased from 6.19 million in June 2014 to 3.85 million in June 2015.
As Mediasat wrote before, the revenues of Russian legal online movie theatres are still increasing. But not all video services bring the expected results to their owners because this business is considered to be unprofitable, as not all the investors can get their investments back. In addition to the financial difficulties online movie theater market can experience significant restrictions on the legislative level. Media Communication Union (MCU) offers a bill that would prohibit foreigners from owning more than 20 % of the shares of any video service in Russia. As a reminder, these legislative amendments were made in the federal law “On Mass Media”.
However, Kommersant writes that the Russian Association of Electronic Communications (RAEC) believes that this draft law is impractical and unprofitable. Also, according to the association, these restrictions can have a negative impact on the capitalization and investment attractiveness of video services. And this, in turn, will increase competition between resources with unlicensed content.
As a reminder, MCU also wants to prohibit the online cinemas from showing their users advertisements of Russian political parties and election campaign at the legislative level.
