European Online DVD Rental Firms Lovefilm, Video Island to Merge

Authored by dmw on April 6, 2006 - 3:43pm.

London - European online DVD rental services Lovefilm and Video Island (ScreenSelect.co.uk) announced on Thursday their intention to merge, giving the combined company a based of 400,000 subscribers and an estimated 17% of the total U.K. DVD rental market. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The new company will be called Lovefilm, and will offer more than 70,000 film titles, and 1.2 million DVD and video game titles, in addition to a video-on-demand service. Following the merger, European digital film distributor Arts Alliance Media will remain the largest shareholder of Lovefilm. In addition to the U.K., the company offers rental services in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The companies expect their merger will enable them to "exploit synergies on marketing, technology, distribution and operations to grow profits faster and accelerate expansion across Continental Europe," and be "more competitive against US rivals such as Amazon, Blockbuster and potentially Netflix." Current partners, some of whom offer white-label services powered by Lovefilm, include AOL, CD Wow, Dixons, Guardian Newspapers, ITV, MSN and Tesco.
http://tinyurl.com/ng9yr
http://www.screenselect.co.uk
http://www.lovefilm.com