Viacom Acquires Video-Streaming Service Pluto TV

By Benjamin Mullin 

Viacom Inc. said it bought the ad-supported video-streaming service Pluto TV for $340 million in cash, a move that gives the pay-television giant another entrée to the realm of online video.

Acquiring Pluto TV will allow Viacom to increase the digital audience for its programming, while giving the owner of networks such as Nickelodeon and MTV instant scale for its online-advertising business.

Pluto TV, which was founded in 2013, streams thousands of hours of content, including movies, news broadcasts and cartoons, Viacom said. The service has more than 12 million monthly users, according to Viacom, 7.5 million of which are on connected TVs.

Pluto TV's revenue is projected to rise to $150 million in 2019, mostly from digital advertising, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company competes with Tubi TV, among other video-content aggregators.

Viacom's purchase of Pluto TV follows another acquisition aimed at bolstering the company's digital-video capacity. In 2018, Viacom bought Awesomeness TV, a digital-video production company, for about $25 million.

The acquisition of Awesomeness has already helped propel Viacom's strategy of producing programming that it licenses to major over-the-top streaming services such as Amazon Prime Video and Netflix Inc.

The Information earlier reported Viacom was in talks to acquire Pluto TV.

Pluto TV Chief Executive and co-founder Tom Ryan will continue to serve as CEO of the service, which will operate as an independent unit of Viacom. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2019, Viacom said.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 22, 2019 18:31 ET (23:31 GMT)

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