Guggenheim Digital Media president John Amato poses at The Hollywood Reporter's 3rd annual Academy Award Nominees Night in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo : Reuters)
In a bid to broaden its international readership, The Hollywood Reporter (THR) has signed a multiyear content deal with Chinese online giant Tencent Holdings.
Under the deal, news, features and videos from THR will be syndicated across Tencent's platforms, including its online portal QQ.com under the segment "THR on Tencent." In turn, Tencent will pay THR an undisclosed fee to license its entertainment trade news and other content.
"With American entertainment growing globally, The Hollywood Reporter has taken on a central role as the most comprehensive, in-depth outlet covering the industry," John Amato, president of Digital Media in THR's parent company Guggenheim Entertainment Group, said in a statement on the THR's website on Tuesday.
"We realized that keeping up with this growth meant finding a partner with both the scale of audience to match the global nature of our coverage and a commitment to quality content and proper intellectual property protections," Amato said.
"Partnering with Tencent, The Hollywood Reporter not only gets exposure to a massive audience of engaged consumers but a responsible, respected and incredibly successful global partner," he added.
Both THR and Tencent, which draws in millions of active online users per month, also said they plan to collaborate in creating editorial content in the future, including award show videos and entertainment news.
"For Tencent, this partnership will allow us to provide top-quality global entertainment coverage to hundreds of millions of our active users," said Caitlyn Chen, Tencent's corporate vice-president.
Tencent has been making a series of deals with American media companies, most recently with Time Warner to stream HBO TV shows and a separate agreement with Warner Music Group.
One of China's top three Web companies, Tencent has around half a billion users for its WeChat social media service, while it has 815 million users on QQ, including 576 active user accounts on smartphones in 2014. Tencent news on its mobile platforms reach 250 million daily active user accounts.
Fueled by the Academy Awards early this year, THR attracted a record-breaking 17 million unique visitors on its website in February, a huge increase from 10.9 million in Feb. 2014, according to data from comScore.
"It's crucial for us to expand internationally, where the growth of the box office and the increasing importance of American television is big news," Amato said.
With regards to THR devoting more resources to newsgathering in China, Amato was noncommittal. "There is no end to our ambitions," he said.
