Connections

It was April 2, 1985 that rights management services specialist RSG Media was first founded. Thirty-six years later to the day, the New York City-based company began a new chapter, with media software and services firm Naviga acquiring RSG. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Naviga will add RSG Media’s content rights management, audience growth and advertising revenue optimization offerings to its digital solutions, diversifying its global media portfolio. RSG Media will continue to operate as a separate business, while its technology is made available via Naviga’s Content Engagement Platform.

“We’re really happy to be a part of the Naviga family,” said Mukesh Sehgal, president and CEO of RSG Media. “This was an easy process, and they’re very good at what they do. At RSG Media, we believe in the value of art and science with respect to delivering radical insights and deeper connections. We are excited to be joining Naviga, who is on the forefront of utilizing next generation technology to provide software and services to the global media industry.”

RSG Media’s media and entertainment customers — like Viacom since 1996 — include some of the biggest Hollywood studios, international sports broadcasters, distributors, VOD and OTT services, across more than 170 countries. Clients such as Hotstar, Sky, Eurosport, Rogers, Corus/Shaw, WarnerMedia and the four American sports leagues leverage RSG Media technology, deep analytics and expert advisory services to enable them to manage content rights, license content and assets globally, and optimize ad revenue.

“The addition of RSG Media supports Naviga’s mission to expand our global media footprint of easy to use, scalable solutions focused on the entire content lifecycle and the success of our customers,” said Naviga CEO Scott Roessler in a statement. “The ability to deliver content directly to consumers has repositioned rights management to the center of the media value chain and RSG Media will help solidify Naviga as a trusted industry leader for monetizing our customer’s content rights to their fullest potential.”

Chris Nguyen, EVP of marketing for Naviga, added: “We’ve been admiring RSG from afar for a while now. One component of our services we saw missing was rights management, and RSG does it better than anyone on a global scale.”

This acquisition creates a new No. 1 rights platform for the $8 billion global rights and royalties management technology sector, and gives Naviga, which provides workflow software to newspapers and other content publishers, a firm presence in the media and entertainment space. In March, Naviga also acquired UK media software provider Miles 33.

Sehgal also added that, coinciding with the acquisition, RSG has released a new version of its rights management platform, which combines rights management for media and consumer products hierarchies. The new version also leverages  artificial intelligence and machine learning for real time availability calculations,  offers a new user interface and user experience anda new tech stack..

“Pretty much every company is trying to figure out the rights to their content assets, decide what to keep, what to sell, and what to hold back,” he said. “Now they have the data that not only shows them what they can do, but let’s them know what they should do. It’s not only predictive, it’s prescriptive.”