Mobile comics platform Tapas Media Inc. was acquired by South Korean media giant Kakao … [+]
Tapas Media Inc
Tapas Media, a US-based webcomics publisher that has made giant strides in the booming market for mobile-optimized content, was today acquired by Kakao Entertainment in a $510 million cash transaction for 100% of the company, according to an announcement from Tapas. That move is bound to open a new and intensive round of competition for North American fans between two South Korean media giants angling to dominate the fast-growing market.
The Los Angeles-based Tapas has grown from a startup to a publishing powerhouse in the past decade by catering to a rising generation of young fans eager to read comics and genre fiction on their mobile devices. Tapas saw a 500% increase in year-over-year revenues in 2020, bringing in more than $2 million per month for its creators. The site’s popular titles such as The Beginning After the End and Magical Boy generate hundreds of millions of pageviews per month. In the aggregate, the company’s 96,000 original series of comics and prose novels have driven over 8 billion page views.
Chang Kim, Founder/CEO, Tapas Media Inc.
Tapas Media Inc
“We’re so thrilled to join forces with Kakao Entertainment,” said Tapas Media Inc. founder/CEO Chang Kim. “It just makes perfect sense. Kakao Entertainment is relatively unknown outside of Asia, but they’re an entertainment content juggernaut with a massive library of original IP, which can be introduced to the US audience through the Tapas platform, With Kakao Entertainment’s backing, we will continue the exact same mission, but with on a bigger scale.”
Scale is the name of the game with Kakao. The company is said to be exploring an IPO for a listing in either in Korea or New York in a float valued at more than $17.8 billion according to a recent report. Prior to today’s news, Kakao said it planned to spend 1 trillion won ($889 million) on new assets. Even after today’s half-billion dollar deal, the company still has plenty left to pick up complementary pieces in an effort to increase its footprint in a global competition for next-generation fans of Asian pop culture with rival Naver, the South Korean owner of the Webtoon platform.
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“Tapas is one of the fastest growing webtoon platforms in North America,” said Jinsoo Lee, CEO of Kakao Entertainment. “Since the second half of last year, Kakao Entertainment has been partnering closely with Tapas to showcase our original IP to the US audience and the exponential resulting growth gave us confidence about the synergies between the two companies. Furthermore, I am looking forward to the insight Chang will bring to Kakao Entertainment’s global operations, given his expertise and leadership in the North American market.”
The stakes are high: global web fiction and mobile comics markets could grow as much as 30% annually according to forecasts from Hyundai Motor Securities Co. analyst Kim Hyunyong.
Tapas’s Chang Kim hastened to reassure current stakeholders that this was a partnership, not a takeover. “This merger means a change of cap table, not of mission,” he said. “Our team, our unique company culture, and our awesome creator community – everything will stay the same. Obviously when something is working well, you want to keep the formula. So, we will stay on course, just moving much more aggressively; and Kakao Entertainment is fully on board with the plan.”
If so, that’s good news for Tapas’s community of creators who have benefited from the company’s model of promoting popular user-generated content and upleveling young creators into high-earning stars. The company collaborates with creators on original content, then helps promote development deals in film, television, streaming, book, audio, gaming and other businesses. Tapas recently announced a deal with print publisher Scholastic for the acclaimed Studio Tapas original series Magical Boy, with a graphic novel slated for release in November, 2021.
Stepping from the small screens of mobile devices to the bigger screens of TVs and cinemas is part of the business model in Kakao’s home markets, where webtoon series in a variety of genres are routinely tapped for K-drama and animated series. However it’s just starting to become a thing in the US. Tapas recently announced partnership with Zoic Studios for television and cross-platform adaptation of the AI thriller Tapas original, Mnemosyne; and Frolic Media and Madison Wells are producing a scripted podcast and developing the TV adaptation of the modern office-place romance series, Yes, My Boss!
This is the end of one chapter for the home-grown startup that pioneered a new market and a new audience for comics and manga-style storytelling, but it’s the beginning of a new era in global-scale competition for readers, fans, creators, licensors and media partners. Tapas started as a snack. Now it’s the main course.
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