France Telecom is conducting exclusive negotiations to purchase a 49% share in Dailymotion for 58.8m Euro. Dailmotion is a video-sharing website that is nicknamed “the French YouTube.”
Atlas Ventures and Partech, investors in Dailymotion, will sell a part of their stakes to France Telecom. France Telecom operates Orange mobile phone services, fixed lines, Online TV, and broadband services
The Dailymotion website is prices at approximately 120m Euros. The proposed contract will enable France Telecom to slowly purchase 100% of the shares from 2013. In contrast, in 2006 Google paid $1.6bn for the YouTube site.
“Dailymotion is one of the rare successes of the French internet and we are rethinking our content strategy so this deal fits together well. Dailymotion is the only real alternative to YouTube in the world,” said Stephane Richard, the CEO of French Telecom. “We want to find a business model that will make Dailymotion profitable, not just allow it to attract visitors.”
You Tube has approximately 144 million users, in comparison with Dailymotion’s 95 million users.
