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In this first of a series of deals Diva supplies five movies to MTG’s Pay TV platforms in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. Going forward Diva will expand this framework to further business models and platforms within the MTG group of companies. For Diva this is the exciting beginning of a larger partnership with one of Europe’s leading media groups. Getting a first foothold in Eastern Europe is particularly exciting for Diva.

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Diva is supplying Virgin with hand selected movies that meet one or more of the following criteria: they have a production budget exceeding EUR 3m, they have won multiple awards and they have a successful cinema release. Thankfully several of Diva’s movies fit the fold. The commercial results should be exciting considering the number of subscribers and the active marketing support Diva can give to drive sales through the Flimflex platform.

The partnership with Buenos Aires based C+D Latam was officially announced at the NexTV 2009 summit held last week. Through its parent company’s rich consulting background Diva’s new partner has access to prime partners in the region. With year on year VoD transaction growth more than doubling the 19 territory region offers an exciting growth prospect for Diva and its new partner.

The 2009 American Film Market is proving very exciting for Diva with three new distribution partnerships signed at the market and the first mini-major deal in the making. With Diva’s expanded access to CE manufactures a co- operation is all the more interesting and lucrative. In true Hollywood fashion there is never a dull moment with protesters making themselves hear and seen inside and outside the market.

With many of Diva’s clients and suppliers based on the US West Coast, this has been a move long due. To lead its North American business development Diva has brought on board a seasoned Video on Demand professional, Elizabeth Cowley, who previously built content licencing and T-Commerce strategy at Zillion TV. Elizabeth will facilitate a content flow between Europe and the US and enable inner US business.

Rovi Corp is a leading supplier of electronic programme guides that combine the metadata of linear TV with the availability of on demand contents into one easy user- interface. Diva is excited about this partnership as it will get premium on demand contents in front of a large number of customers equipped with Internet connected TV sets.

NASDAQ listed Netflix is best known for its DVD rental business which offers virtually all North American DVD titles as rentals mailed to subscribers homes. Netflix is expanding its service to a digital derlivery of over 17’000 movies to subscribers TV sets. To give subscribers the 10ft digital TV experience Netflix has partnered with Xbox 360, Roku, LG, Samsung and TiVo. Diva is excited to supply a monthly release of movies to Netflix.

With operations in the Bahamas, Jamaica, Grenada and Trinidad Columbus Communications is the leading broadband and entertainment provider in the Caribbean. Premium movie packages and series are due to go live under the consumer brand Flow which is due to launch its video on demand service later in 2009. Together with Columbus Diva is packaging several hundred movies and serial contents into premium subscription offerings to compliment the a la carte choice.

As the iTunes stores come of age they expand their repertoire from TV series and studio contents to independent movies. For the initial delivery Diva has selected movies across the most commercial genres with source materials in a sufficient resolution. As the first results come in, it will be possible to fine- tune the line up and give producers guidance which contents to focus on. Being in a position to release movies on iTunes has been a 12 months business development effort for Diva that began with the encouragement of the iTunes European CEO, Oliver Schusser and his US counterpart, Robert Kondrk, in May 2008.

Under its deal Diva is supplying movies to be made available on a number of upcoming multimedia handsets, including the W995. All movies are optimized to mobile viewing. The selection will be continuously refreshed and includes many multiple award winners, among them the Hungarian Thriller “Kontroll”.

The movies include the Drama The Blue Butterfly and are meant for Samsung’s new Omnia handset. The technical enabler operating the store on behalf of Samsung is Diva’s partner Acetrax. This deal proves that viewing of entire movies on mobile handsets is a very promising space where Diva expects explosive growth and more deals.

These are Europe’s largest telecommunications and cable companies respectively. The separate partnerships give Diva access to installed IPTV customer bases in Germany, Jordan and the Czech and Slovak Republics. The customer facing VoD services are known as Alice, MeToo and Orange. Diva is supplying more than 100 of its award winning movies, many of them day and date with the respective DVD release.
Going forward Diva will seek to extend these partnerships to the many other territories in which its partners operate; these include operators in Arica Europe and South America.

Diva.AG has signed an extensive deal with Saffron Digital UK to supply movies and short contents to Vodafone UK, Iceland and T Mobile UK. Both operators have extensive Mobile TV streaming and video on demand services and are extending their offering.

Zurich, February 3, 2009

Diva.AG launches a suite of bespoke applications facilitating content commerce for movie producers and video on demand platforms. The online tools include a rights management system, a content selection tool as well as a reporting and analytics module. All components are part of Diva’s proprietary Daedalum™ platform, named after the very first cinema projector.

Diva’s Daedalum™ platform now allows for easy capturing of media assets including business rules and metadata. At the same time these contents are put at the fingertips of Diva’s VoD customers, which include leading Internet portals, telecommunication companies and cable platforms. All business generated with these content retailers is then reported back to film producers and their agents with the help of a transparent reporting tool and online dashboard. Here content producers can track the performance of their contents over time and benchmark this performance by region, genre and business model.

While the evolution of the Daedalum™ will continue, Diva’s COO, Joerg Boksberger, feels that this platform release has been a particularly important step for Diva: “Our new commerce tools make supplying movies to video on demand platforms and collecting revenues very straight forward. Streamlined processes and increased transparency are both qualities that were sorely missed in the young on demand industry.” Diva sees its toolkit as a perfect commerce enabler, but Joerg admits that despite technology, “deals will always be done face to face”.

Diva.AG offers a distribution solution to independent studios and distributors wishing to access emergent digital distribution opportunities. Today Diva.AG today has operations and sales offices in Zurich, Berlin, London, New York and Beijing

In the VOD / IPTV area, AllTheContent.com has a unique offering of compelling content. Both in HD and SD, the content provider mainly focuses on extreme sports films, adventure documentaries and ambiance content. Hobbies, home decoration, cooking lessons or wellness are also among the most popular categories for VOD consumers.

The deal with Diva is an important step for Clement Charles, CEO and founder of AllTheContent.com. “As an independent company providing cross platform content in many languages, it’s nearly impossible to ensure only by ourselves an even development in all media and territories. Global and based on a long term vision of collaboration, this agreement with Diva.AG can drive our content directly into the services of important players such as AT&T (Usa), Maxdome (Ger) and Korean companies like Daum Group, Gom TV and Hana TV, among many others.”

Diva’s Managing Director, Kai Henniges comments their interest in signing with the Geneva based company. “ATC has gained a deep understanding for the types of content that do well in web and on demand environments. They know what nature and length of content capture end users attention. This expertise compliments Diva.AG’s background of supplying long form contents to many of the largest video on demand platforms. ATC’s content is fresh and edgy and suited to a different group of customers including portals and mobile operators which we are now beginning to access.”

Microsoft launched a commercial trial of its MSN Movies service on November 27, 2008. The service is operated by Diva’s partner Nowtilus GmbH. The offering is advertising financed and stands to become a major commercial success thanks to the substantial traffic the portal attracts. Dynamically served pre- roll advertising is sold by Microsoft and served into the contents by DoubleClick.

Diva.AG has contributed several hundred short form contents to the service. As soon as the service goes fully commercial in 2009 Diva.AG will add selected award winning full feature movies.

Diva’s extensive business development efforts in North America are showing the first substantial success. Sales efforts began by mid 2008 followed by stringent quality tests which were finally successfully passed in October 08. In December the first pair of movies represented by Diva are going live on these 4 prime platforms and on a network of as many as 84 affiliates  throughout Canada, Central America and the US.

With many prime pictures competing for viewer attention, Diva has to select the very best pictures every month. These are not necessarily large budget pictures, but independent movies that are well packaged, thematically interesting or day and date premieres.

Richard is a seasoned media professional who was previously a VP of marketing at Vivendi Universal and Universal Music Group International and was instrumental in building a new division into a EUR 100m+ global content power house. He has previously been on long assignments to the Middle and Far East as well as Southern Africa where he has built valuable relationships with the largest content retailers in their respective regions.

Richard is a graduate in international marketing communications and economics from the University of Westminster London. For Diva, Richard works out of London.

Diva attended the AFM in full force: Azadeh who heads Diva’s US office was assisted by Diva’s management team as well as two business development assistants, Natasha and Silva (see picture). During and right after the show Diva was able to sign up a number of new partners, including Cetus Productions, Digital Shadows, Electric Light Films, Mac Daddy Productions, Pacific Media and Vision Films. Another dozen more are currently in negotiation and due to follow during the next busy weeks before Christmas.

This proves Diva’s value proposition of a full service VoD service including materials & metadata handling, sales & marketing as well as revenue collection is extremely well received by sales agents and producers. A solid track record of revenue shares paid out to existing partners including Beta Film, Telepool, Spotlight Pictures and many others has obviously been most helpful in convincing the new partners to come on board.

Another strong point in favour of Diva is the newly established US office and distribution deals including Big Star TV, Cinemanow, DISH, Sling and many others.

The Zurich based start- up Diva.AG is the developer of an innovative B2B publishing hub for digital media assets. Diva.AG has secured funding from CREATHOR VENTURE.

Diva distributes independent movies, TV series and documentaries to international video on demand platforms. Movie producers and sales organizations value Diva’s service, which includes the digitization of media assets, sales and distribution as well as transparent reporting. Diva’s proprietary Daedalum™ platform handles content normalization, encoding, metadata management, content management and aggregated reporting through an online dashboard.

This makes Diva a hub and essential go- between of two highly heterogeneous industries: content producers and retailers of digital contents. This allows Diva to create and benefit from a positive network effect of both contents and partners. Already today Diva’s repertoire by far exceeds the selection offered by a local video store with many contents that are otherwise hard to find.

Diva’s Managing Director, Kai Henniges, on CREATHOR’s commitment: „We are glad to have an CREATHOR VENTURE on board as they have deep roots in digital commerce. Diva will now expand its operations to Asia and North America and establish itself as the leading aggregator of independently produced contents.“ Cédric Köhler, Investment Manager with CREATHOR is convinced that Diva will be able to establish itself as one of the first movers in the fast growing VoD market: „Media consumption is increasingly shifting online and with Diva’s help the best filmed entertainment is put at the fingertips of consumers globally. Diva is well positioned to capture a healthy part of the value being generated through the IP distribution channel.“

Diva.AG is tapping into the vibrant US video on demand market by setting up a New York office and hiring Azadeh who has been in the field of film acquisitions and distribution for over 7 years. She has a deep understanding of emerging digital platforms thanks to her previous leading role at Kirch New Media. From Diva’s New York office Azadeh oversees US operations and looks after Diva’s US customers including Amazon, DISH, Slingmedia, TVN and many other large on demand platforms.

among them Forbes, India Daily, Reuters and Yahoo Finance. The article was also picked up by Google where it was read entirely by 2’500 media professionals.
The article mostly talks about Diva’s business model and as a result Diva has had requests from several content suppliers, VoD retailers as well as industry peers.

The horror thriller “Blood Mary” enters Maxdome’s charts ahead of “I am a Legend” featuring Will Smith. This proves Diva’s proposition of focussing on independent movies as an alternative to Blockbusters. Diva’s contents are often much harder to find for consumers than Studio content, however where they are made available they pull their own weight.

While Diva initially only co- operated with Pro7’s German brand Maxdome, the relationship was now extended to cover the BeNeLux, Hungary and Scandinavia. These territories were recently added to Pro7’s stable with the 2008 acquisition of the SBS Group and its various local broadcasters.

including best film, best director and best screenplay as well as several nominations. The 2005 Israeli drama is based on a novel set in Middle East:

 

 A successful author, Liz, searches for her daughter, Rachel, in the Sinai Desert. There she meets a Bedouin storyteller who relays the unusual love story of a Western tourist and the son of a Bedouin Sheik named Najim. Their relationship is torn apart when the American is exposed to a tribal ritual.

 

 

 Diva is expecting to generate exciting sales for this title with its European retail partners in the UK, Scandinavia and further culturally sensitive markets.

The investors were convinced by Diva’s strong and experienced management team, the transactional business model and the nature of the service provided to content owners and VoD operators.

Diva aggregates entertainment rights for VoD platforms globally; its technical platform normalizes the technical format of contents, manages all metadata and business rules and delivers these contents to customers encoded to their specifications. Diva’s customers are VoD platforms in Asia, the Americas and Europe, among them telecommunications firms, cable companies as well as stand- alone Internet portals.

This service is charged as a service fee per end customer transaction with all usage statistics reported to content owners online. This transparent business model makes Diva’s offering an attractive sale to suppliers and customers alike.

Diva’s services were endorsed by Nicolas Pelletier, SVP of Voltage Pictures, who instantly saw the value of Diva’s service: “Diva is a one- stop-shop that gives our feature movies and TV series access to 250 VoD portals globally; Voltage is not equipped to manage these distribution relationships individually.

Diva is managed by Kai Henniges, who previously led Vodafone’s content acquisitions, and Joerg Boksberger, a seasoned software entrepreneur. Diva’s head office is in Zurich Switzerland where all content is securely managed. Additionally Diva is represented by seasoned professionals in the important content markets including China, France, Germany and the US.

Diva.AG signs up the seasoned information technology / telecommunication expert Yu Xing Chen for China

Swiss educated Yu Xing comes with more than 15 year’s management experience and expertise in the information technology / telecommunication industry and has also in depth knowledge of the Chinese market. Yu Xing will assist on forming Chinese partnerships both for sourcing award winning Chinese movies as well as for adapting and distributing Western content in this vast market.

Robert Franke, a seasoned movie professional with 7 years of production experience with Cmate Films in Berlin, joins Diva.AG as Content Acquisition Manager.