FTSE 100 pay-TV firm Sky PLC (LON:SKY) has invested US$2mln in SDVI, a US-based content supply chain management firm located in Silicon Valley.
The company, which also counts media giant 21st Century Fox Inc (NASDAQ:FOX) among its shareholders, provides a cloud-based service that helps media companies manage resources and applications across their content supply chains, as well as analytics software which Sky says would allow its customers to transform the use of technical infrastructure and drive end-to-end improvements in efficiency.
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The investment in SDVI comes the same month as Sky’s US$4mln investment in Israeli venture capital firm Reimagine Ventures, which specifically targets technology startups, and is its 20th investment in a startup over the last six years, with recipient companies including streaming device maker Roku, cloud video platform 1Mainstream, and The Drone Racing League.
Emma Lloyd, Sky’s group director of business development and partnerships, said the deal showed the companies’ ambition to invest in “pioneering and disruptive emerging technologies” that can enhance its customer offering, adding that it provided an opportunity to “gain insights” from a “leading provider of supply chain management”.
The move comes amid a trend among large media companies to shift content toward streaming and online mediums and away from TV to compete with the likes of streaming giant Netflix Inc (NASDAQ:NFLX) and the video arm of Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN).
Sky itself is also the target of an ongoing bidding war between media giants Fox (which owns 39% of Sky) and Comcast Corp (NASDAQ:CMCSA) for control of the broadcaster and most of its assets.
In lunchtime trading Tuesday, Sky shares were up 0.2% at 1,547.5p.