Wal-Mart Acquires Vudu IPTV
Wal-Mart’s acquisition of California based streaming video company, Vudu Incorporated, may have AVN biting it’s nails.
A company press release stated, “VUDU has licensing agreements with almost every major movie studio and dozens of independent and international distributors to offer approximately 16,000 movies, including the largest 1080p library of video on-demand movies available anywhere. Via their broadband Internet connection, users have the ability to rent or buy titles and begin viewing them instantly.” – XBIZ
The AVN Channel supplies hundreds of streaming titles from leading adult studios including Wicked, Hustler, and Vivid over Vudu’s network. Hustler President Michael Klein said it was hard to say what Walmart will do.
“We have our content on Vudu and we hope that it will remain there but Walmart doesn’t offer adult DVDs and it’s an unknown whether they will support it with IPTV. Adult is obviously a money maker but Walmart doesn’t always do things just to make money.” – Hustler President, Michael Klein
Klein has stated that neither Wal-Mart nor Vudu have contacted him. The quotes provided from Vudu, concerning the acquisition, have focused mainly on the scale of Wal-Mart’s retail expertise. It will be interesting to see whether or not Wal-Mart’s family based sales experience will continue to offer the AVN Channel as part of Vudu’s IPTV network.
Sources: XBIZ.com
