In this article, our M&A Director Erik Cornelissen discusses the recent success with our content partner, the French cloud gaming company Blacknut, and examines the reasons why this partnership is successful. Moreover, we look at the short- and long-term benefits of CLIQ’s minority investment in Blacknut and the unique opportunities it provides to CLIQ. Let’s start!

Hi, Erik! Blacknut is one example of a successful partnership case. What is Blacknut and how is it connected to CLIQ?

Blacknut is a French cloud gaming company that distributes games both direct-to-consumer (D2C) and business-to-business through Internet service providers, device manufacturers, over-the-top services and media companies. Blacknut offers a large catalogue of more than 500 premium games. CLIQ made a minority equity investment in Blacknut in 2021 and, at the same time, CLIQ signed a cooperation deal with Blacknut to jointly create a new company (Cliq Games B.V.) to market cloud games as a single-content service to acquire gaming-focussed members.

The global cloud gaming market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 46% until 2030. CLIQ aims to play a much greater role in driving that growth going forward. CLIQ wants to offer its members the choice of playing games in a product bundle via its bundled content portal as well as via stand-alone single-content portal services. Either way, CLIQ’s target audiences will highly appreciate the very wide range of games on offer and the convenience of being able to play their favourite games anytime and anywhere in the world.

What are the short-term and long-term benefits of the investment?

This is an important strategic step to create valuable, long-term partnerships, and access to valuable growth-driving content. Thanks to Blacknut’s cloud gaming platform, Blacknut’s licenced games will be included in CLIQ Digital’s global single- and multi-content portals and cliq.de in Germany. Furthermore, a new single-content portal will be created for pure-play cloud gamers. And the new cooperation agreement, which includes the set-up of the new company Cliq Games, will accelerate the D2C cloud gaming business of Blacknut and CLIQ Digital.

What unique opportunities do we expect the cooperation with Blacknut to open for both sides?

The joint company Cliq Games B.V. will combine Blacknut’s growing cloud gaming product and the relationships with carriers they have with CLIQ’s expert marketing and distribution channels. This gives CLIQ large growth opportunities and will make CLIQ’s streaming services more relevant and attractive to its members and will be instrumental in increasing customer loyalty.

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