Why (and where) The Daily Beast (and other pureplays) are looking for international partners

This will be Cue Ball’s (a FIPP member) third pure-play digital client looking for international media partners. The others are Business Insider and Meredith’s Allrecipes (which now also has a successful print component).

Above: The Daily Beast screengrab

The Daily Beast

John Cabell, Cue Ball Founder and CEO, says, “The Daily Beast will be looking to partner with news and other media organisations targeting Millennials, starting off with France, Germany, Poland and Japan. They are open to considering either a branded-license arrangement or a large-scale content syndication deal.”

Business Insider

According to Cabell, speaking to FIPP’s Cobus Heyl, Business Insider has so far signed deals “in China, Australia, India, Southeast Asia, Poland and Germany … and are close to signing deals in France and Scandinavia.” Other markets targeted include Africa, the Middle East, Japan, Spain and Italy.

Allrecipes

“Allrecipes has localised sites in 17 territories (all run out of Seattle), but is looking at more involved relationships (to include publishing the relatively newly added, very successful print magazine) in a few key markets.” 

Cue Ball, the Worldwide Media Marketplace and FIPP World Congress

Cue Ball’s core practice is the brokerage and development of cross-border media through licenses, joint ventures, mergers, acquisitions, divestitures and strategic partnerships. The group has worked with 150 clients in 19 countries and brokered more than 400 deals since its inception in 1997. 

Past and current clients include large global enterprises such as Bloomberg, BBC Worldwide, Meredith, American Express, Bonnier, Gruner + Jahr, Hachette Filipacchi, Playboy, Editora Abril and Hubert Burda Media … and specialist publishers such as Active Interest Media, Citizen K, Source Interlink, Time Out Group, L’Equipe, Harvard Business Review, Outside, The Economist, Surface and Future. In addition to digital natives Allrecipes, Business Insider and The Daily Beast, Cue Ball also advises genConnect, DARA Artisans, Dot429 and Omega Wireless on fundraising.

Cabell and his partner Mike Greehan will be at the FIPP World Congress in Toronto, Canada from 13-15 October, attending the Worldwide Media Marketplace on 13 October, while Cabell will host a panel on the changing nature of cross-border business on the Congress main stage on 14 October (for those not familiar with cross-border business, Greehan will host a Masterclass on Monday 12 October – you can get more information about the Masterclass here).

Forces driving cross-border business today

In the past, media owners’ cross-border ambitions were constrained by distribution. They not only required local expertise, but also infrastructure to make cross-border publishing work. The Internet has changed the game, with virtually anyone now able to reach audiences abroad.

There are two broad forces at work.

On the one hand, for legacy media where print was the brand mainstay, many deals are increasingly digitally-led or digital-only. For content plays, the reality of targeting new markets has proved easier said than done; hence pure-plays looking towards established media companies as potential partners in new markets. Cabell’s panel, which includes Axel Springer, Business Insider, Meredith Corporation and Time Out International, will discuss these forces in greater depth.

In addition, The Huffington Post (with partners in several markets) and Politico (Politico Europe partnership with Axel Springer) will share their own internationalisation experiences and lessons. This will be followed by a session where Quartz will explain, amongst other things, their entry into India and Africa with dedicated brands for each.

According to Cabell, pure-plays’ interest in partnering in some form or another with local media partners presents an important new opportunity for diversifying portfolios – with partners with proven digital savvy – or to obtain rich, engageable content for their own sites. “If you plan to be at WMM in Toronto, Mike (Greehan) and I will be happy to talk you through opportunities with our portfolio of new and existing brands.”

Read more:

For more on the future of cross-border publishing, read our pre-Congress Q&A with John here and with Business Insider president Julie Hansen here. 

Read what FIPP president and CEO, Chris Llewellyn, has to say about developing cross-border publishing in an online-dominated world here.

And here is a Q&A from earlier this year with Allrecipes on its digital-to-print development.

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