Turner Invests in Swedish Celebrity Website

LONDON: Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) Europe has made an investment in the Swedish media company Starlounge, which provides celebrity news online.

Starlounge has operations in 12 countries in 11 languages. The site recently achieved a new traffic high, with 16.2 million monthly unique visitors. The company has plans to launch in several new markets by the end of 2011.

The new investment follows on Turner’s recent acquisition of the Scandinavian channel group MMG.

“The investment is both strategic and commercial in aspiration,” said Jeff Kupsky, the president of TBS Europe. “With the great fit between our existing assets across both entertainment and news, and similar international expansion goals, over time we see opportunities across content, digital ad sales, sponsorship and promotion and business development. We are excited by the possibilities for geographical scale and audience growth that this new alliance represents for both parties.”

Hans Becker, the CEO and co-founder of Starlounge, added, “We are very pleased that a diverse global media company has chosen us as its business partner. This is proof that Starlounge is a serious player in the media sector. Interest in celebrity news is on the increase and our aim is to become the number one celebrity news channel internationally. With Turner, we will be able to continue our development into new markets beyond Europe and to become the best global channel for news about celebrities, irrespective of media platform.”

Becker continued, “Our success so far is proof that our concept of high-quality celebrity news works. We have our own editors for all markets, which means that we are able to monitor both local and international celebrities. This is unique and is a reason for Starlounge’s expansion, as there are major differences in the different markets.”

Kupsky added, "Turner’s expanding presence in the EMEA territory consists off 61 news, kids and entertainment channel feeds in 23 languages , so there are a whole range of prospective content and distribution synergies across TV and Digital platforms."