Grow to avoid being weakened or even disappearing. On Tuesday June 18, the digital kiosk company Cafeyn signed the acquisition for 4.5 million euros of the French branch of the Swedish Readly, formerly called ePresse-Toutabo. After acquiring the French miLibris, the Dutch Blendle and the American Kidjo, the French company – which defines itself as a major player in the “information streaming”with the development of the American platforms Spotify and Netflix as an example – will begin a new merger-acquisition, the fourth since its founding in 2006, at the time under the name LeKiosk.
Present in France and eight other countries, the online press title aggregation platform Cafeyn claims 2 million users, without revealing the number of paying subscribers. It provides access to nearly 2,500 press titles for a subscription of 10.99 euros per month. To do this, the company has established partnerships with 550 publishers, including titles from the national daily press (Release, The cross, Le Figaro, The Parisian), magazines (She, Gala, Paris Match), but also English-speaking media like The Guardian, Time Magazineor Newsweek.
Through this acquisition of ePresse-Toutabo, the Cafeyn group is boasting a new necessary step in its consolidation on the French market, while the company says it has been profitable since 2017. Between ten and fifteen people could thus swell the ranks of the 150 current employees (including around a hundred in France).
A strong competitor
“This will allow us to diversify our distribution networks, expand our catalog and offer publishers the opportunity to monetize their content to a larger audience”estimates Laurent Kayser, who became general manager of the company after the death of its president and co-founder Ari Assuied, in October 2023. This acquisition is also a way of responding to the recent emergence of a major competitor, PassPresse, created in September 2023 by Prisma Media and Canal+ , both owned by Vivendi, whose majority shareholder is Vincent Bolloré.
The fact remains that certain publishers, like the Le Monde Group, refuse to integrate digital kiosks, fearing a destruction of the value of journalistic content and a cannibalization of their subscriber base. In 2021, the sports newspaper The Team had announced leaving the Cafeyn platform for this reason. “Cannibalization is a smokescreen, rather than a reality”defends Laurent Kayser, giving the example of the weekly Pointwhich had ceased its partnership with Cafeyn at the same time as The Teambefore returning in 2023.
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