EM.Sport acquires Wige stake

German television group EM.Sport Media has acquired a 15% stake in Cologne-based outside motorsports production company Wige Media for a seven-figure sum.

EM.Sport was born out of EM.TV last summer when the company decided to restructure and offload its kids entertainment business, focussing purely on sports instead.

In November the firm splashed out €120m (US$178.6m) for Swiss-based sports rights business Highland Communications. The Wige Media buy-out was described as being in the “low single-digit million Euro range.”

Wige mainly specialises in sports production but is also involved in entertainment too and has subsidiaries in Monaco and South Africa. The company is behind coverage of around 200 events a year currently and in 2006 had revenues of €37m.

EM.Sport subsidiary Plazamedia and Wige have been a co-production partners for a number of years and EM said the company’s strengths in motorsports and soccer would complement its own in the latter field.

“The European production market is currently undergoing a phase of consolidation and EM.Sport Media is playing an active role in this process,” said EM.Sport board member Rainer Hüther.