Exclusive: Moonbug’s MD Americas on IP acquisition strategy & audience scale

CoComelon

CoComelon and Blippi owner Moonbug Entertainment has shared details of its IP acquisition strategy, telling TBI that the company is open to pitches from potential partners of existing scale as it continues its global expansion.

The Candle Media-backed kids content firm, which recently hired Warner Bros. Discovery alum Yasmin Zahid to lead its push into APAC, has a strategy of seeking out existing children’s brands to acquire and build into global franchises.

Talking to TBI, the company’s MD of Americas, Andy Yeatman, said that Moonbug is not only actively searching for IP to acquire, but is also open to pitches from creators that might want to partner with Moonbug – so long as they come with a significant existing audience.

“We don’t take brand new pitches, it’s just not our business model. But if someone has an existing YouTube channel, music property, Roblox game… then absolutely,” he said.

“It’s really kind of all about audience. People do come to us, and our team scours out there, so it’s probably already on their roadmap if it’s got a decent sized audience – and it would have to have a certain scale audience for it to make sense.”

Andy Yeatman

Yeatman said that a “rough rule of thumb” for a property to get on Moonbug’s radar would be to have a YouTube channel that consistently attracts at least 100 million views per month.

“We start to pay attention [around that number] and track it and maybe meet with the people – what our team is always doing,” says the exec, adding that it would be similar metrics for Roblox games.

Yeatman references Moonbug’s launch of Blippi’s Playground last month, a video game available exclusively on Roblox, based on its popular Blippi franchise. Gaming is a relatively nascent area for Moonbug, which also launched CoComelon: Play With JJ on Nintendo Switch last year, as it seeks new ways to leverage its IP.

For those that do meet the criteria and want to partner up with Moonbug to potentially turn their property into a global franchise, it does however mean handing over the reins.

“We’ve done many different structures, but for us, majority ownership is a must have,” said Yeatman. “We’ve done deals with a small majority ownership. We’re usually very happy for the creators to stay a part of Moonbug, but it’s up to what they want to do, really. It’s very important to have a real honest conversation about what they want to do in the next few years; if they want to be a smaller part of a bigger company, do they just want to exit, or do they really want to control [the IP] and keep running the ship.”

Yeatman adds that the benefit is if creators trust Moonbug to be “a good steward of the characters and the IP that they created” then together they can “grow it bigger than they could do on their own.”