Merkin Group to pursue Online DVD and Video Games strategy

Horizon One Entertainment and its parent The Merkin Group which includes the online media specialists subsidiary BoxRED Pty Ltd see video games as a logical extension of their long term business strategy. “Whilst not a core business the growth cannot be overlooked” says Merkin Group and Horizon One Entertainment Chairman and CEO Sean Rothsey.

“The packaged media home entertainment industry (i.e. Videos and now DVDs) has grown from just approximately $33 million in industry revenue in 2000 to approximately $1.4 Billion in 2008. This seems phenomenal until compared with the IEAA released figure on 20th January 2009 of games industry revenue of $ 1.96 billion in 2008.” Read the complete article here

Rothsey said “that it was not yet formulated whether Horizon One Entertainment (its genre driven home entertainment distribution partnership with Jeff Harrington and Scott Clayton) or BoxRED (The Merkin Group’s online specialist subsidiary), or indeed the industry known art house distributor Pinefilm Entertainment (our other Merkin Group subsidiary) would operate the online entertainment and ultimately games business. However, it is clear that the investments for one would be underpinned by the sales revenue of the other. The issue is not to confuse the brand or our strategic partners or other stakeholders in our industries.”

“We feel it is important to distinguish between a quality online distributor for quality art house, niche and foreign language films for example, a genre driven distributor (albeit more recently distributing top notch high budget, high volume Direct To DVD titles for example 88 Minutes being released in February in Australia with 27,000 units) and a video games distributor,” says Rothsey.

…Download Press Release Here