The 2007 startup co-founded by Will Ferrell, Funny Or Die, sees 6 million unique viewers and 60+ million video views a month. Not bad for a user-video comedy service. It was enough for Turner Broadcasting to take notice and make a minority investment in the company. The strategic partnership is aimed to increase content and sales.
“While we are incredibly excited about how this partnership will catalyze our growth and make Funny Or Die an even better place for comedic talent, we are even more excited about the opportunities this will open up to brands and advertisers to create far-reaching, hilariously funny cross-platform content and messaging,” said Dick Glover, president and CEO of Funny Or Die. “TBS, Adult Swim, Turner Digital Sales and the rest of the Turner organization are a fantastic fit with us in all ways. Plus, we are instantly gaining an even larger sales staff, something it would take us years to develop. This is very cool.”
“We’re thrilled by our acquisition of Turner,” said Adam McKay, co-founder of Funny Or Die, jokingly. “We’re now taking a long hard look at Viacom. These are heady days over here at Funny Or Die.”
The partnership will bring Funny or Die to other platforms, including television and mobile. This brings up some interesting possibilities for future TV shows. Would they do a sketch based kind of show or expand some of their current skits into a longer format. A real Zack Galifianakis talk show would be hilarious.
It is unclear if television shows will be launched on Adult Swim or if they will start making their way to TBS. Either one has interesting possibilities. According to both Turner and Funny or Die, they have already began working together on the creative side of the business.
On the not so creative side of business, Turner Digital Sales will now handle Funny or Die advertising, exclusively. This will hopefully open the doors to some big buyers, and we can see an increase in both the quantity and quality of Funny or Die’s programming.
[source: TVbythenumbers]