Vuulr Sales Up 205 Percent in 2021

In 2021, Vuulr generated sales of more than 9,000 total hours of content, up 205 percent year-over-year.

While the U.S. continued to lead the way in buying activity with 3,500 hours of licensed content, 2021 saw strong growth from international buyers. The largest increase in content licensing came from buyers in India, up 987 percent to make up 22 percent of the total, followed by U.K. buyers up 266 percent and Canadian buyers up 176 percent.

New entrants included Singapore, Mongolia, Nigeria, Malaysia, Cyprus, Germany and Rwanda, which collectively licensed 2,030 hours of content. Mongolia alone now represents 5 percent of the total licensed content.

“Content creators and distributors now recognize that online content marketplaces are a valuable additional tool in the distribution and acquisition process,” said Ian McKee, Vuulr’s CEO. “Sellers are seeing new incremental revenue and better global reach, and buyers are finding the process of discovery and acquisition of both local and international content faster and more convenient. We’ve made licensing content across the globe more convenient and accessible than ever before, and this is just the beginning.”

McKee continued, “Whilst the single largest trading block continues to be U.S. buyers acquiring content from U.S. sellers via Vuulr, we are enabling an incredibly global trade. In 2021, buyers from 53 countries closed deals on Vuulr, acquiring content in 72 different languages and licensing from 54 countries ranging from Argentina to Vietnam.”

While the Vuulr marketplace features content from 60 different genres, drama remained the top-selling block, making up 16 percent of all licensed content. The other top genres were documentary, comedy, thriller/suspense, romance and horror. Documentary, biography, romance, crime and horror experienced the biggest growth in demand year-over-year.

“The entertainment industry continued its digital transformation in 2021 as the industry went global to satisfy the demand by audiences for more and more international content,” McKee explained. “This is in line with a recent McKinsey study that revealed that B2B buying has gone online, with buyers enjoying the speed and flexibility it provides. For example, deals on Vuulr close in, on average, 12 days, which is significantly faster than the traditional norm. This enables teams on both the buy side and the sell side to manage much higher deal volumes and cover more territories.”