Orange to invest in Dailymotion, will expand international user base

Orange’s CEO has confirmed the company will invest a further €30 million in developing video sharing site Dailymotion following its failure to strike a deal with Yahoo! to take a stake in the operation.

CEO Stéphane Richard told financial daily Les Echos that Orange had decided to develop the site using internal resources. He said Orange’s plan envisaged Dailymotion’s revenues rising from €37 million last year to more than €100 million by 2016. Orange will invest €30 million to help Dailymotion achieve this goal, with plans to hire an additional 60 staff, mostly in France, with plans to open offices in Spain, Japan, Canad and Brazil.

Richard said that Dailymotion, which already makes 85% of its revenues from its international business, will also place greater emphasis on developing new business in countries such as Germany, the UK and the US. He said the key to developing the business would be to build its user base rather than to change its existing business model.

Richard said Orange would also investigate what synergies could be realised between Dailymotion and its parent company.

Orange’s plan to invest in Dailymotion follows the breakdown of talks to sell a stake in it to Yahoo! in May following the controversial intervention of government minister Arnaud Montebourg to limit the extent of non-French involvement in the company.