MSM Corporation International Ltd (ASX:MSM) Managing Director and CEO, Dion Sullivan, discusses the launch of the company's Megastar Millionaire online talent contest to capitalise on the convergence between mobile advertising and gaming.MSCI publicly listed on the ASX back in January. It is a digital entertainment technology company. It is an amalgamation of Australian and US businesses and our remit is all digital entertainment technology.
So Megastar Millionaire is a 12-week emerging talent competition. It goes for a bit longer, because there’s a lead into it from an audition point of view. And then we’re going to have a live stream finale, post tournament one. But really what it is, it’s a very meritocratic emerging talent competition, where talent of all different genres from across the globe, come together on our platform to compete head-to-head for fame, fortune and building social integration from a brand key point of view. Of course a grand prize of $1 million certainly doesn’t hurt, but there’s a number of other benefits within Megastar Millionaire.
So it is Mobily integrated. So it is going to be viewed and consumed online, primarily out of Smartphones or tablets. It’s monetised in a number of different ways; it’s monetised basically in four different pillars. The first is in app purchasing, which is very common for those people who are Mobily integrated. That’s a $US22 billion US per annum business. So that’s things such as emojis, stickers, tipping and donation, digital and physical merchandise, a very very big business. Not quite as big as the second monetisation factor, which is online advertising, that’s $US158 billion per annum. And because we own the technology, we are first party platform, it’s all video based. Very similar to what a Hulu or an Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) or a Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) does, where you have to consume what’s known as a V4VC Videos-for-Virtual-Currency, it’s a very tried and true methodology.
Third is sponsorship and licencing, it’s a great opportunity for brand strategists, that’s what I did for the last 28 years. So a premium brand who’s looking to get better integrated with its potential core audience, they can use the MSM platform. And then finally fourth and not insignificant is the fact that because of the data we’re collecting, we’re able to resell the metadata from a behavioural predictive modelling point of view.
For the best of our knowledge and I’ve been looking at this for about four years, it is the first of its type. Now there’s similar in a more narrow format, but really what it is our approach is mobile centric, highly meritocratic and something that has just a number of people involved, from a core competence point of view. Our strategic partners have been instrumental in our success so far. One of them is Roar. Roar is a talent management agency out of Beverley Hills California, actually helmed by a couple of Australians. And they’re helping us from the celebrity and social influencer factor. Then we took a strategic investment in ToneDen, which is based where I am in northern California, Silicon Valley. And they’re all about emerging music technology, working from within there. So that’s really focused on DJs and promoting within their community, a very big business among the younger demographic.
And then finally, Digital Riot Media. Digital Riot Media is the brainchild of my US business partner. And what that is basically is taking full-length feature films, morphing that onto digital only, online only, and promoting social influences. That is You Tube stars, hence the connection. We have tested this. As a matter of fact, we’ve been running since the end of September, a closed data and then closed auditions. We’re not attempting to replicate what television has done, because they’ve done that very very well. Of course that has a very high production value. Rather we’re flipping the paradigm and making it so that it’s mobile centric, open to a much broader base and allowing the social media populace to determine who wins out.
We currently have $AUD6 million in the bank, fairly low burn rate with respect to the normal technology. We’re going to launch in late Q1 of 2017, we’ll start monetising from day one. So the intention the way that this was structured, was to make sure that it washes its face beginning day one. We plan to do in calendar 2017, two of these tournaments. The first tournament will be in Canada, US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
So the long-term view of MSM is to become what we aspire to be, which is a global, digital entertainment technology company. Megastar Millionaire will be our first product, but not our only product. Again, they will all share the commonality that they’ll be global in scope and mobile centric socially integrated. We want to build fun. We want something that’s an entertainment and delighter to audiences of all ranges.
In a year’s time from now I want us to be highly profitable, working at a high-level of equity interest and being able to continue to expand in different marketplaces. We’re taking a very concerted effort in what our rollout is, approaching it from a strategic opportunity point of view. Certain areas come ahead of others, that’s to be determined going forward.
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