Fuse Media Partners With Lionsgate, Tastemade and TMB

One company is lighting the fuse of multicultural marketing ahead of the TV upfront. Today at the Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing’s Diverse Owned and Targeted Media GrowthFronts, Fuse Media revealed strategic partnerships with Lionsgate, Tastemade and Trusted Media Brands (TMB). The moves expand the company's owned and operated channels and increase scale ahead of the 2024-2025 upfront season. The Latinx-owned entertainment company had a strong upfront in 2023-2024, with double-digit volume growth and high single-digit CPM increases, and Miguel Roggero, chairman and CEO of Fuse Media, told ADWEEK the goal is to build on that momentum. "Our whole strategy has never really deviated. It's delivering a diverse audience, but at significant scale," Roggero said. "That's what we've been building over the last couple of years, and these partnerships only help us do that on steroids." Fuse Media Closes Upfront With Double-Digit Growth in Volume With Lionsgate, Fuse Media becomes an exclusive ad inventory seller for several FAST channels, including Ebony TV by Lionsgate, a channel featuring films and popular series celebrating Black culture; MovieSphere by Lionsgate, a channel showcasing even more blockbuster films; HerSphere by Lionsgate, a channel for female-driven stories; and OuterSphere by Lionsgate, which has sci-fi classics. Also, though Tastemade and Trusted Media Brands have their own sales teams, Fuse Media is supporting their multicultural ad sales. For Tastemade's ad inventory, the deal includes Tastemade, Tastemade Travel, Tastemade Home and Tastemade en Español. Meanwhile, several TMB properties, including Fail Army, People Are Awesome, The Pet Collective, At Home With Family Handyman and Weather Spy, will be exclusively represented. "In CTV, a lot of the narrative is the performance and viewership outpacing the demand from the advertising side of the business, and what we're doing is helping support that," said Patrick Courtney, head of digital and business development at Fuse Media. "We're building that ecosystem by taking what we do very well—being diverse-owned media, reaching multicultural audiences—and then supporting really strong programmers in the FAST space in particular." Buying into buying power According to the company, culturally diverse consumers have a buying power of $7 trillion, and the new partnerships help Fuse reach over 85% of multicultural households in the U.S., giving Fuse Media an even greater presence in the marketplace. It adds to the company's breadth of stats, including overindexing in reaching Black, Hispanic and LGBTQ+ audiences, according to MRI-Simmons. In addition, Fuse Media notes that it reaches 73% of Black Americans in the U.S. with an audience 7 years younger than most Black entertainment channels. "There aren't many minority-owned media companies that have this level of scale that we do now, that's reaching these audiences across platforms," Courtney said. "It's not only audience-based targeting, but the fact that it's contextual against very premium, long-form content across these platforms, creates a really compelling offer, distinct and unique in this marketplace." FAST growth Fuse Media attributes its success to being an early entrant in the FAST space in 2018, now growing to more than 20 channels in 2024. The company’s current FAST channels, which include Shades of Black, Backstage, Latino Vibes and OUTtv Proud, have continued their strong viewership growth, reaching nearly 2 billion minutes in 2023 ahead of the company's upfront close. According to Fuse Media, each channel posted “double or even triple-digit growth in viewership in 2023." Additionally, the company is doubling down on reaching Hispanic audiences. In addition to Somos Novelas, a Spanish-language channel featuring novelas from around the world, launching later this year to join English-language channels Latino Vibes and El Rey Rebel as part of Fuse Media's FAST portfolio, the company recently announced that it's the exclusive English-language home of Combate Global, the Hispanic Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) sports franchise, with live events airing between spring and summer 2024. The company also features popular returning programming such as Made From Scratch, Like a Girl, Bollywed, Sex Clinic, and Fuse films and docs. In addition, Fuse Media is welcoming back one of its highest-rated series, Big Freedia Means Business, which Roggero notes comes with a "massive audience worldwide." "You can mention Big Freedia in L.A.; you can mention Big Freedia in New York; you can mention Big Freedia in New Orleans; you can mention Big Freedia in South Africa, and they know who she is," Roggero said. "It's exciting to have her on the air." With the company's reach of younger, multicultural audiences that don't necessarily intersect with other players in the marketplace, Roggero notes that Fuse Media is complementary to an upfront marketing media mix. "It's not just reaching a diverse audience at scale," Roggero said. "If an advertiser wants to focus on a particular demo, we can do that with this broad ecosystem that we've created, and we can do that with significant numbers."

TV Upfronts

Fuse Media Partners With Lionsgate, Tastemade and TMB to Increase Multicultural Scale

Exclusive: The company expands its multicultural reach ahead of upfront

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