Kevin Mayer & Tom Stagg Acquire COCOMELON Production Company Moonbug in $3B Deal
By Movieguide® Staff
Disney alums Kevin Mayer and Tom Stags recently bought the popular children’s show COCOMELON’s production company, Moonbug Entertainment.
According to Deadline, the duo is backed by Blackstone Firm, with the final price reaching $3 billion.
“John and I have built a category-leading, digital-first kids entertainment business based on strong values and content that is focused on digital platforms,” Moonbug’s founder and CEO René Rechtman said. “Our vision is to build global family franchises, which is wholly aligned with Kevin and Tom’s vision and experience. I have had the pleasure of working with them both earlier in my career and am thrilled to be reunited to build the next global powerhouse of entertainment. You could not find stronger partners in our industry.”
COCOMELON often appears in Netflix’s top ten.
Joe Baratta and David Kestnbaum at Blackstone, added: “We are thrilled to partner with René, John, and the impressive Moonbug team. They deeply understand the fast-changing digital media environment and have rapidly established Moonbug as a digital-native powerhouse in children’s entertainment. We are excited to help fuel their continued expansion in the years ahead.”
Deadline reported:
Moonbug programming appears in 27 languages on more than 100 platforms around the world. In addition to Netflix, it is carried by YouTube, Hulu, HBO, Amazon, and Sky. The CoComelon channel on YouTube channel is the No. 2 among all channels on the platform, with approximately 120 million global subscribers.
For Mayer and Staggs, who each were part of the upper management of Disney, the deal is a followup to their acquisition last summer of Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine. Mayer has been wearing multiple hats, serving as chairman of Len Blavatnik’s sports streaming operation DAZN and recently joining Discovery as a strategic advisor.
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