MTG Buys into Bulgarian Online Business

STOCKHOLM: Modern Times Group has signed an agreement to acquire 70 percent of the merged assets of Darik News and Net Info in Bulgaria from the commercial radio operator Darik Radio.

MTG has the option to buy the remaining 30 percent of the company within a five-year period. The operations have a range of services across 33 ad-funded sites, and comprise the market-leading digital conglomerate in Bulgaria in terms of monthly reach. Darik News operates a number of websites, including the news site dariknews.bg, sports news site gong.bg and weather site vremeto.bg. Net Info operates the email platform abv.bg with approximately 3.5 million users, video clip site vbox7.com, sports news site sportni.bg, weather site sinoptik.bg and entertainment news site edna.bg.

Jørgen Madsen Lindemann, the president and CEO of MTG, commented: “The acquisition of the Darik News and Net Info operations is a key milestone in the development of our Bulgarian presence. It significantly expands our overall customer proposition in Bulgaria, and will enable us to leverage our content in new and innovative ways across a number of popular platforms, to reach more people than ever before with the entertainment of their choice. We will also be able to extend our advertising proposition and reach, and to offer advertisers more extensive and finely tuned products than ever before.”