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Keywords snaps up German localisation and dubbing firm TV+Synchron

Date Type Companies involved Size
September 20th, 2019 acquisition Keywords Studios $3.1m
Keywords snaps up German localisation and dubbing firm TV+Synchron

Tech and outsourcing firm Keywords Studios has announced yet another acquisition, this time of Berlin-based localisation and dubbing firm TV+Synchron (TVS).

Keywords paid out €2.8m ($3.1m) in cash, with a further €900,000 ($993,000) being paid in ordinary shares with the deal et to close on October 1st. This is part of Keywords' recently push for its audio division, which saw the purchase of companies including Laced and Cord.

Speaking to investors, CEO Andrew Day (pictured) said that while Keywords' business has been 100 per cent centred on the video games market, it does do some localisation work for Netflix and other TV and film platforms. Right now it has a small team working in this space, with Day emphasising that this is a small bet.

"What we've done - and you don't see but it's actually part of the investment that we're making in the business - is we actually have a small team now dedicated to that market," he said.

"I don't want people to start thinking that this is some big bet that we're placing. It's tiny, tiny little baby steps into that market as we sort of explore the possibilities of leveraging the Keywords' infrastructure and expertise that we have in what is essentially the same discipline but applied to a slightly different content type. And we're very pleased with the sort of response we get from people like the over-the-top platform holders, the Amazons, the Netflix, Disneys, and so on, looking for additional suppliers to them that will help them get that content to market faster and in a simultaneous fashion."

He continued: "The acquisition that we've made in TVS today is another little sort of toe in the water, as we, on the one hand, get some capacity in the German market that we need for video games. Its base business is subtitling and dubbing or doubling mostly for film and television content. So I think the answer is we're looking at it. We're not placing any major bets at the moment."

Day's comments follow the CEO reporting Keywords' financials for the six months ending June 30th, 2019, which saw the company's revenues rise 39.3 per cent year-on-year to €153.2m ($169m). It would also seem that it is looking to increase its headcount by a fair bit, too, with the "preparation" of around 1,4000 new workstations. That's in the region of 25 per cent of its existing capacity.

 


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.