Playboy, Manwin Strike Online, TV Deal
From Xbiz.com
By Rhett Pardon
Friday, Aug 5, 2011
LOS ANGELES — Playboy Enterprises on Friday said it struck an agreement in principle with the Manwin Group relating to its online and TV businesses.
The deal, which hasn’t yet closed, provides that Manwin will be an operating partner for certain Playboy-branded online and entertainment businesses under the label Playboy Plus Entertainment.
Since February, rumors have swirled in the adult industry over a potential Playboy-Manwin deal that would include all of Playboy’s online properties.The deal made public Friday presumably includes all of its websites, but representatives from both Playboy and Manwin couldn’t immediately confirm that to XBIZ.
Under the terms of the agreement, Playboy will retain oversight of brand management. Additional terms of the agreement, weren’t disclosed.
Playboy CEO Scott Flanders said the partnership is another step in turning Playboy from an operator of a range of media and licensing businesses to a brand management company.
"We began this process with the successful outsourcing of our publishing functions and later partnering to grow consumer-products licensing opportunities in Asia and Europe," Flanders said.
"In Manwin, we have found another strong and experienced partner, and believe that this agreement will benefit our customers, distributors and advertisers."
Alta Loma Entertainment, Playboy’s mainstream production company that develops, produces and distributes original content to TV networks and film studios, won’t be affected by the agreement.
Fabian Thylmann, managing partner of Manwin,said that "there is no doubt that Playboy Enterprises has created a brand that is the epitome of sexy, fun indulgence."
"Manwin will help this prestigious name capture both TV and the digital age in the spirit in which it was created. Manwin’s scale and expertise will catapult the brand in a way that will benefit all our partners, as well as Playboy fans."
Manwin operates Brazzers, YouPorn and Twistys, as well as numerous other brands.
I think Playboy Plus is the hardcore and some of their “lesser” sites. I don’t think they will be involved in Playboy.com and their cyberclub site. Playboy has had a TERRIBLE time with their web affiliates and some of their previous associations. For years, they were very protective of their cyber content and went after everyone legally who would post their photos and some of the Playmate videos. About 5 years ago when they started partnering with other adult affiliates all of their content was dumped out on the web in a very short period of time including their classic photos and pictorials.
For 20 years now PB has missed the boat and always been a day late and a dollar short when it came to trends. They tried to continue to be all high and mighty with their magazine when other magazines like Hustler and Gent were more explicit and took many of their fans. Like most other magazines their subscriptions have dropped off dramatically and when they got into the cyber business others were there ahead of them already and their material was more explicit. Their way of dealing with the situation is to spend all kinds of money on lawyers to try and keep their content off the WWW. Thats like trying to bail out a sinking lifeboat with a tablespoon. Only one that made out well in that whole situation are the lawyers.
It really is very difficult to stop the piracy. They need to make changes and offer stuff that the pirates have a difficult time sharing. Live shows and cam shows seems to be the future of the porn industry. Playboy has some of the best looking women on the planet but they don’t do explicit work or sex on camera. How many people are gonna pay big $$$ in todays economy to see a pretty girl show her tits on a cam show when they can go to Brazzars and see Phoenix Marie and Julia Ann fucking some porn mope LIVE on camera?