Viacom takes stake in DigiTour

DigiTour Media, the Los Angeles live-entertainment and media company for Generation Z, announced that media giant Viacom Inc. has acquired a significant minority stake in it.

DigiTour Media, founded in 2010, has become known for producing live shows — called DigiTours and DigiFests — featuring social media stars from Vine, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and other platforms geared toward younger audiences.

Terms of the deal announced Tuesday were not disclosed.

“Partnering with a premier entertainment company like Viacom and its powerhouse brands is something I have always envisioned for DigiTour,” Meridith Valiando Rojas, cofounder and chief executive of DigiTour, said in a statement.

Viacom’s move underscores its efforts to attract younger viewers, who increasingly gravitate toward online stars with large followings.

A recent study from Defy Media, a digital entertainment company, found that viewers in the advertiser-desired 13-to-24-year-old age bracket watch an average of 11.3 hours of free online video. That figure is nearly twice the time reported for free online TV offerings from broadcast and cable networks (6.4 hours) or for regularly scheduled TV (8.3 hours).

Though Viacom’s media networks reach 3.4 billion television subscribers worldwide, its premier TV networks — Nickelodeon, MTV and Comedy Central — are grappling with ratings declines amid cord-cutting.

For the April-to-June quarter, Viacom’s revenue fell 11% from a year earlier. The company, run by 92year-old Sumner Redstone, generated $3 billion in revenue in the quarter, falling short of analysts’ estimates of $3.2 billion. Its cable channels generated $2.6 billion in revenue, the same amount as the year-earlier period.

“We believe that this pairing will lead to opportunities to combine our authentic connection to Generation Z with Viacom’s unparalleled television, film, digital and international resources in order to help accelerate and scale our media brand globally,” Rojas said.