NOAH RAISES £2M INVESTMENT FROM A ROSTER OF TECHNOLOGY, MEDIA AND SPORTS STAR BACKERS
Noah Media Group, at just six years young, is known for its world-class feature documentaries and series – predominantly in the sports space - and for working with some of the biggest sports federations, streaming platforms and broadcasters in the world. Theatrical releases have included the Grierson Award-nominated Finding Jack Charlton and Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans (Official Selection, Cannes). The acclaimed Adam Hills: Take His Legs was broadcast by Channel 4 in the UK and Bobby Robson: More Than a Manager was picked up internationally by Netflix.
Noah has also focused on self-distributing its productions, aiming to challenge the traditional distribution pathway for content producers and optimise partnerships and profitability for its film and television content. This announcement speaks to Noah’s ambitions to drive this change further.
The roster of impressive new stakeholders includes ex-Skyscanner CEO Gareth Williams, former XIX Entertainment President James Clayton, pre-eminent Hollywood entertainment lawyer Kevin Yorn, former editor of WIRED magazine David Rowan and multi F1 Grand Prix-winning motor racing driver Mark Webber. The eclectic mix of backers marks the next step in Noah’s investment plans for the Group.
Noah’s 2021 Investors include:
Barry Smith – Chairman, Noah Media Group, Co-Founder of Skyscanner
Ben Saunders - World record-breaking polar explorer
Bonamy Grimes - Co-Founder of Skyscanner
Brendon and Sarah Hartley-Former F1 driver, double World Endurance Champion
David Rowan - previously editor of WIRED magazine, Founder of Voyagers.io
Dr Jack Kreindler - Founder of the Centre for Health and Human Performance, Co-Founder of Certific
Gareth Williams - Co-Founder, ex-CEO of Skyscanner
James Clayton - Chairman of Beano Studios, former President of Simon Fuller's XIX Entertainment
Julien Codorniou - VP, Workplace from Facebook
Kevin Yorn - Entertainment lawyer, Yorn Barnes Levine Krintzman Rubenstein Endlich and Gellman LLP, Partner at Broadlight Capital Partners
Kirill Gourov - Partner at Kraken Ventures and a crypto/blockchain specialist
Manu and Rakhi Gupta - Founding Team & ex-Partner @ Lakestar VC
Mark Webber - Former multi-F1 Grand Prix winner, World Endurance Champion
Ray Nolan - ex-Chairman of Skyscanner, Founder of HostelWorld, XSellCo, Ultimate Rugby
These plans are set to focus on bringing together a world-class technology team to build a data-driven evaluation engine, which will allow Noah greater scrutiny in their choice of films and series to produce, on a per-project basis, at a global scale, in order to maximise the distribution and commercial opportunities for all of their content.
In addition, development will begin on an end-to-end platform that will deliver greater transparency for the entire filmmaking process: from finance, production and distribution, through to sales, marketing and collection. Plans will allow for this platform to be licensed to independent filmmakers in the future.
Noah Chairman Barry Smith explains, “This is an extremely exciting time for Noah Media Group. This injection of investment will go directly into advancing and improving our evaluation processes, leading to better production and distribution decisions. Firstly, identifying and then reaching a bigger audience will, we believe, lead to greater profitability for independent filmmakers and financiers through a combination of targeting and growing this audience (transactional D2C) and creating films and series with an increased international appeal to our downstream partners (SVOD, broadcasters etc).”
CEO John McKenna continues, “This new investment will enable us to make smarter decisions to continue delivering world class content for some of the biggest streaming platforms, broadcasters and sport federations in the world. We believe this will allow us to be more effective for our partners. As far as we know, this isn’t being done at scale by any other independent production company and we are very excited to get started on this next phase for the business.”
2021 Investor and Co-Founder, ex-CEO of Skyscanner Gareth Williams adds “Noah Media Group delivers outstanding films and I am delighted to be able to invest into Noah. The software they are building will bring some norms of internet distribution to challenge some of the inefficiencies that exist in this industry. I join some amazing technology and media investors - and I believe John and his team will continue to execute strongly as they enter this growth phase.”