Following a 25% Increase in Digital Piracy, London-Based MUSO Receives £3.9M Investment from Puma Private Equity

LONDON, Aug. 3, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- MUSO, a London-based data company that provides a complete and trusted view of global piracy and unlicensed media consumption, announced today that it has received a £3.9M investment from Puma Private Equity, a leading provider of growth capital to small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) across all sectors and regions of the UK.

MUSO has seen a 25% increase in general digital piracy year-on-year, when comparing H1 of 2021 to H1 of 2022. Its unique and transformative data is fast becoming a must have data-currency for entertainment companies and is already used by the likes of Amazon Studios, National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), NOS, Lionsgate, MNRK (formally eOne Music), Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe, and more. MUSO's technology measures hundreds of billions of visits to Piracy websites each year and provides unrivalled consumption and audience data that allows rights-holders to better protect their content from Piracy but also increase their revenues.

This investment showcases Puma Private Equity's commitment to supporting growing SMEs in their ambitions to scale; the £3.9M investment will support the establishment of MUSO's marketing function and larger build out of its sales teams in both the United Kingdom and United States.

"Piracy remains a significant issue for the entertainment industry, but MUSO's data enables companies to use it to discover vast, valuable as up to now, unseen audiences' said Andy Chatterley, Chief Executive Officer of MUSO. "Our customers are using our data to acquire and commission content, unlock new marketing opportunities, leverage value in licensing negotiations, maximise and optimise windowing strategies. MUSO is a game-changer to the entertainment industry's approach to piracy. We are turning the tables on two decades of losses and creating value-driven opportunities from this challenging inevitability of digital consumption.

He added, "This investment from Puma Private Equity comes at an incredibly transformative time for MUSO. Piracy continues to be a major problem for rightsholders and we are committed to implementing new strategies that allow us to not only protect content but to provide increased commercial value by measuring, understanding and activating our audience data. We will be deploying this investment into expanding our sales and marketing teams and activities to highlight MUSO's valuable products and data to the global entertainment industries."

Puma Private Equity offers growth capital and expertise to best-in-class, ambitious businesses across the UK, irrespective of sector, and works in partnership with management to help businesses scale and create long-term value. It aims to deliver insight, expertise, and a fresh perspective to the portfolio companies it partners with. Having invested in and worked with more than 35 organisations across a breadth of sectors from consumer e-commerce to fleet transport safety and influencer marketing, Puma Private Equity has deep insights and experience in scaling businesses for growth and where desired, successful sale and exit.

"We're pleased to have completed our investment in MUSO, as we believe the business shows significant growth potential," said Harriet Rosethorn, Investment Manager at Puma Private Equity. "As on-demand streaming platforms grow and drive a fragmentation of content distribution, global firms like MUSO will play an increasingly important role in monitoring and tackling piracy. This deal is just the latest example of Puma Private Equity's long track record of supporting companies with untapped growth potential. We look forward to working closely with the team to achieve their goals."

MUSO engaged M&A Advisor Lazarus Consulting to find and secure the right investor for the company.

MUSO's unique datasets shine a light on audiences that are not revealed through traditional panel-based measurement. MUSO is the first data company to directly and comprehensively measure audiences across both streaming and P2P sites. The growth of on-demand streaming platforms is driving fragmentation of content distribution, but content is increasingly gated whilst audience demand for unlicensed digital content grows.

From May 2021-2022, MUSO measured more than 201 billion visits to digital piracy websites. This is a vast audience that is not influenced by licensing restrictions or platform bias, making MUSO's data uniquely valuable to digital rights-holders. For more information, visit www.muso.com.

Puma Private Equity is a leading provider of growth capital to SMEs across all sectors and regions of the UK, delivering investments between £2 million to £10 million and partnering with management teams to accelerate growth and help businesses achieve their potential. Further information on Puma Private Equity can be found at https://www.pumaprivateequity.co.uk/. Puma Private Equity is the private equity division of Puma Investments.

Media Contact
Matt Jaffe
matt@relativity.ventures

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