June 23 (SeeNews) - Bulgarian internet company Dir.bg said it has bought a 51% stake in Efficiency First Media (EMF), the owner of WNESSTV and the yet to be launched cooking channel Soul&PepperTV, in a push to enter the television market.
The financial terms of the deal were withheld. The remaining 49% interest in the business will be kept by founder and managing director Ivan Todorov, the buyer said in a statement on Tuesday.
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The investment is aligned with Dir.bg’s strategic goal to position itself as a multiplatform media by entering into niche TV projects with good potential for proprietary content development. For EMF, it represents an opportunity to expand online audience.
EMF launched WNESSTV as the first wellness television network in 2015 and three years later the channel began broadcasting its own exclusive content. The TV channel claims to reach millions of households through cable and satellite operators in Bulgaria. Its programme is also available in Ukraine, Croatia and North Macedonia. Soul&PepperTV is set to start on July 1.
Established in 1998, Dir.bg is the first Bulgarian online portal, serving an audience of about 1.5 million unique users a month and with more than 35 million impressions. The internet company was taken private in 2014 by its 5.78%-owner Logo-Company which bought out the remaining 94.22% stake in the business for about 6.3 million levs ($3.8 million/3.2 million euro).
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)