REACH

28 October 2021

ZOO DIGITAL GROUP PLC

("ZOO", the "Group" or the "Company")

ZOO Digital's global growth strategy

Regional hubs will strengthen ZOO's global support to major content creators and streaming services

ZOO Digital Group plc (AIM: ZOO), the leading provider of end-to-end cloud-based localisation and media services to the global entertainment industry, today gives more detail on its global growth strategy to scale its operations by establishing regional hubs in key international locations.

Accelerated growth in international distribution of regional content, alongside the launch of new global direct-to-consumer platforms, continues to generate strong demand and opportunity for ZOO's globalisation and media services. In order to align with its clients' current and future objectives in fast-growing territories, the Company is finalising investments to expand its geographic footprint in key content sourcing and distribution locations, namely Turkey, Korea, Thailand, India, Japan and Malaysia.

ZOO is one of just a few global vendors with the proven capability to deliver complete end-to-end services to ready content for audiences in all languages and formats, owing to its cloud-based technology ecosystem and collaborative network of independent dubbing studios, vendor partners and freelance actors and translators. The regional investments will further strengthen the Company's offering by simplifying access to new territories, thereby helping clients to overcome the challenges of localising and fulfilling huge volumes of original and catalogue content, as well as supporting the increasing need to prepare locally acquired TV shows and movies for streaming services around the world. The new hubs are also expected to support the business development team by providing wider international coverage and access to new markets.  

The expanded ZOO Digital Group will continue to consist of long-established businesses that have been affiliate partners to ZOO for several years. These companies, which include media services providers and localisation vendors, already have extensive experience working in the proprietary cloud-based technology used by ZOO throughout its global ecosystem of partners and freelancers. The all-encompassing approach supports unrestricted creativity while enforcing high standards of production quality, workflow efficiency and content security across the entire global group.

Stuart Green, CEO of ZOO Digital, said:

"Southeast Asia, the Middle East and India are all experiencing rapid growth as content centres for an increasingly global audience. Our expansion in these regions will add scale to ZOO's operations, further diversify our revenues and provide access to new talent pools in lower cost economies. For our clients, it will enable us to deliver even higher levels of creativity, quality and security in some of the fastest-growing and most important regions for media companies. By aligning our business with their growth ambitions in these territories, we are well positioned to support our clients' content requirements and capitalise on new market opportunities."

The Company will make further announcements regarding its investments as deals are completed.

For further information:

About ZOO Digital Group plc:

ZOO Digital supports major Hollywood studios and streaming services to globalise their content and reach audiences everywhere, by providing world-leading, technology-enabled localisation and media services.

Founded in 2001, ZOO Digital operates from hubs in Los Angeles, London and Dubai, with a development and production centre in Sheffield, UK. The company is targeting $100m sales in the medium term.

The Group provides media services through its platforms that include: ZOOsubs, ZOOdubs, ZOOstudio. Its full-service proposition delivers the end-to-end services required to prepare both original and catalogue content for digital distribution; these services include dubbing, subtitling & captioning, metadata creation & localisation, artwork localisation and media processing. Alongside this offering, ZOO also provides its customers with management platforms and strategic solutions to support their own internal globalisation operations.

ZOO is a go-to service partner for media businesses looking to globalise their content across different territories, languages and distribution platforms. Using its innovative technology-enabled approach, ZOO helps its customers to reduce time to market, lower costs and deliver high quality products to their global audiences. The business has frameworks in place with all major Hollywood studios and streaming services. Its customers include Disney, NBCUniversal, HBO and ViacomCBS.

ZOO's competitive advantage arises from three interlinking factors - the leading role it has played in the digital transformation of its sector; the world class proprietary platforms that it develops to enable this transformation; and the global supply chain of thousands of freelancers, working collaboratively in ZOO's platforms, which delivers services that scale easily to meet demand. These factors combine to make ZOO uniquely geared to capitalise on new market opportunities in a fast-paced and constantly evolving industry.