Mobile navigation

News 

Future acquires WhatCulture & Waive

Future plc today announced the acquisition of WhatCulture, a digital-only entertainment publisher and Waive, a data insight platform.

Future acquires WhatCulture & Waive
Zillah Byng-Thorne: “We look forward to working with WhatCulture to further diversify our content and revenue streams.”

WhatCulture is a digital-only brand focused on the gaming and entertainment market. WhatCulture's website and 11 YouTube channels have respectively 3m users and over 8m subscribers, and c.70% of its revenue is from the US, says Future.

This acquisition further strengthens Future’s position in video, notably with its expertise in the monetisation on YouTube. WhatCulture will benefit from the Future proprietary technology stack and operating model to drive the platform effect whilst bolstering Future’s gaming and entertainment vertical.

Waive is a data insight platform which provides intelligence on emerging content trends. This acquisition will extend Future's “Aperture” data platform and enhanced data science capabilities. Aperture is Future’s proprietary platform that allows advertisers to access Future’s first-party audience data captured across its portfolio of brands, helping them reach high-intent target audiences.

Zillah Byng-Thorne, Chief Executive, said: “We are delighted to welcome both WhatCulture and Waive to Future. We look forward to working with WhatCulture to further diversify our content and revenue streams, and we are particularly excited about the video monetisation expertise and data insight capabilities that WhatCulture and Waive will bring to the Group respectively.”

Peter Willis, Co-Founder of WhatCulture said: “We're really excited to join an organisation like Future which has seen such amazing success. We have real synergies between our desire to create great original content for our audiences. Our YouTube expertise combined with their monetisation and platform know-how will realise great opportunities for further growth in this area and unlock real potential across the business.”


Keep up-to-date with publishing news: sign up here for InPubWeekly, our free weekly e-newsletter.