SeaChange Unloads VoD Content Unit for $27M

Avail-TVN is paying $27 million for On Demand Group (Nasdaq: SEAC), SeaChange International Inc. (Nasdaq: SEAC)'s U.K.-based video-on-demand aggregation and management unit.

The sale comes roughly six weeks after SeaChange indicated that ODG was on the block and about ten days after SeaChange closed the sale of its broadcast video server business.

And Avail-TVN shouldn't have any trouble covering the bet, announcing Monday that The Carlyle Group LLC has led a $100 million round of funding in the company to help out with the transaction and to help fund Avail-TVN's new international expansion strategy. The investment makes Carlyle Avail-TVN's largest investor. ODG CEO Tony Kelly now reports to Avail-TVN CEO Ramu Potarazu.

Why this matters
For SeaChange, the divestiture is an important step along the way to becoming a pure-play software company focused on supplying cable operators and other pay-TV providers with backoffices for multi-screen video services and apps and software systems for IP- and QAM-based set-top boxes and gateways. However, SeaChange has no near-term plans to sell off its video streamer product line. It'll continue to sell those products alongside its Adrenalin backoffice while also looking to integrate its backoffice with more video pumps made by outside suppliers. (See Edgeware Adds Server, Teams With SeaChange.)

For Avail-TVN, the deal will let it expand internationally as it gets its hands on a company that handles about 1 billion VoD transactions per year and counts customers in 20 countries, including major service providers such as Virgin Media Inc. (Nasdaq: VMED) and Kabel Deutschland GmbH .



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— Jeff Baumgartner, Site Editor, Light Reading Cable