MUSO Lands Private Equity Investment

U.K.-based data company MUSO, which tracks online piracy, has received a £3.2 million ($3.9 million) investment from Puma Private Equity.

The investment comes on the heels of MUSO tracking a 25-percent increase in digital piracy in the first half of this year as compared with 2021. From May 2021 to 2022, MUSO measured more than 201 billion visits to digital piracy websites.

The Puma investment will be used to expand MUSO’s marketing division and sales teams in the U.K. and the U.S. M&A advisor Lazarus Consulting was engaged by MUSO to secure an investor.

“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, CEO of MUSO. “Our customers are using our data to acquire and commission content, unlock new marketing opportunities, leverage value in licensing negotiations, maximize and optimize 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.”

Chatterley added, “This investment from Puma Private Equity comes at an incredibly transformative time for MUSO. Piracy continues to be a major problem for rights holders, 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.”

“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.”