FLENSBURG, Germany and ALMERE, The Netherlands, August 29 /PRNewswire/ --
- First Licence Agreements Concluded With Telecommunications Industry
FLENSBURG, Germany and ALMERE, The Netherlands, August 29 /PRNewswire/ --
Beate Uhse, the market leader in the erotica sector, has successfully concluded five cooperation agreements with telecommunications companies in recent weeks. The Group has thus laid a foundation for marketing its films via video on demand and taken a very major step towards establishing itself in the digital market. "We see new media as harbouring great growth potential for our business," commented Serge van der Hooft, COO, with regard to the signing of the agreements. "This will enable us to optimally exploit the potential offered by our movie library." Films will no longer be distributed exclusively via DVDs and the company's own internet platforms, but will also be available across all distribution channels, such as pay TV, free TV and video on demand services offered via internet protocol (IPTV) and mobile devices. Beate Uhse can draw on a film library of more than a thousand titles covering every genre, most notably the films produced under its own top-quality Daring! label.
For telecommunications companies, erotica represents an interesting business field offering great potential and Beate Uhse, as a publicly listed company, is a respectable partner with a well-known brand. The first five cooperation agreements have been concluded with leading providers in the Benelux countries, Germany and Scandinavia.
Customers of Deutsche Telekom in Germany will from now on be able to access erotica films via the T-Home product, either at the convenient click of a button at home or via the TV channel Erotic Chill Out TV offered by the company Muc Media GmbH. Not only that, customers of HanseNet Telekommunikation GmbH will also be able to enjoy Beate Uhse products via the Alice TV/video on demand offering. Films from the erotic online video store NIGHTCLUB.DE can also be viewed via broadband on customers' PCs or televisions. NIGHTCLUB.DE is offered by maxdome, Germany's largest video on demand portal. In the Benelux countries, Beate Uhse has acquired KPN as a sales partner for videos on demand. The films are also offered in that region by Videoland, a cooperation partner of KPN and the largest video store chain in the Netherlands, as well as on KPN's mobile internet portals. As for the Scandinavian market, one of Europe's largest pay TV platforms, Canal+, has been acquired as a customer for broadcasting an erotica film programme.
With these cooperations, Beate Uhse has set a milestone in the major future growth market of new media. "We will increasingly be positioning ourselves as a digital marketplace for erotica", stated van der Hooft, "and will also be pursuing this objective further in future." The cooperation business is managed and controlled by Beate Uhse Licensing B.V., a business unit specially founded for this purpose.
The Beate Uhse Group has subsidiaries in 15 countries and operates in 60 markets. With an annual turnover of Euro 268 million, the Group is the market leader in the erotica business and distributes its products via its wholesale, mail order, and retail channels, as well as by internet. Beate Uhse has around 280 shops in eleven European countries.
Millions of customers in nine countries prefer to shop with Beate Uhse by ordering products from the mail order catalogue or via the internet. The company website http://www.beate-uhse.com has become one of the world's best-known addresses for home shopping and erotic entertainment. Its extensive movie programme is available across all new media platforms, such as IPTV, handhelds and VoD, and includes the international programme available on the MovieOn streaming platform. Proprietary adult movies are sold under the Daring! label, which is synonymous with top-quality productions. The proprietary sex toy and wellness line, Mae B,, the first of its kind to be certified by the German Technical Inspection Agency (TÜV), is manufactured at the company's factory in Hungary. Beate Uhse has 1,400 employees and has been listed on the German stock exchange since 1999. Its vision is to be the universal provider of sex and erotica products for the entire world.
Contact: Assia Tschernookoff, Director of Corporate Communications, Beate Uhse AG, Gutenbergstrasse 12, 24941 Flensburg, T +49(0)461-9966125, F +49(0)461-9966377, e-mail: atschernookoff@beate-uhse.de .
