The Readly app displayed on a tablet. Picture: Readly
French all-you-can-read platform Cafeyn has finalised its acquisition of Readly’s non-Nordic businesses, meaning it is now running the platform in the UK.
The deal saw Cafeyn buy Readly’s operations in the UK, Germany, Switzerland and Australia from Bonnier. It has taken the group to combined revenues of nearly €100m (around £87m).
Some 350,000 Readly users have been added to the Cafeyn group, taking it to a total of more than 2.5 million users who can access 5,200 publications from 1,100 publishers.
Users in this non-Nordic group will continue to see Readly branding.
Chief executive Laurent Kayser told Press Gazette said that the merger means more money to publishers through increased scale.
“We will be the largest group in Europe buying content from publishers,” he said, adding that as more publishers join the platform “the more [revenue] we distribute to publishers”.
This revenue is “pure margin”, he said. “The publishers need this as well to be able to continue to finance their model and finance their journalists and journalism, so we’re very happy to contribute, and I think the scale of the group we’re creating in Europe allows all this.”
Cafeyn acquired Readly’s French business in 2024 , and claims €450m (£392m) has been accumulated from both platforms over the past ten years.
“The bigger we are, the more scale we have got, the more we can invest into technology [and] into innovation to make sure that we’re creating the digital experience that audiences want, and potentially, younger audiences want,” said Kayser.
Some 39 full-time Readly staff will be transferred to Cafeyn’s operations, which will now amount to around 200 employees. No redundancies were made as a result of the deal.
An additional 20 staff will be hired in the UK and Germany to support an increased investment in technology.
Readly to ‘slowly’ adopt AI features and videos
The migration of Readly into Cafeyn’s operations will be “seamless”, said Kayser, adding the experience will be kept familiar with favourite titles and personalised recommendations remaining.
However, the functionality and features developed in the French market will be “slowly” brought in, including videos and AI functionalities.
One AI-powered feature will be a “daily digest” newsfeed summarising headlines from publishers that the user interacts with.
Data from Readly users will also be used to shape Cafeyn’s product roadmap, said Kayser. But “nothing will change” for publishers.
Kayser said all-you-can-read platforms like Cafeyn give publishers access to a new, younger audience.
He said it is “an attractive model because we are targeting different audiences than the audiences of the publisher”.
Kayser added that the average age of Cafeyn users is around 42, “much younger” than the typical average age of direct subscribers to publishers.
He attributed this to a younger audience demand for “unlimited access” as they are accustomed to platforms like Netflix and Spotify.
Partnerships and tiered subscriptions
Looking ahead, Kayser’s priorities are continuing growth in large-scale partnerships, having seen success with mobile networks Virgin Mobile and O2.
“We’ll be looking at reproducing those types of large-scale deals across the different geographies.
“We have got the brands, the users and the contents of the UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and so on. We have already started conversation with some of the large operators.”
The platform is also looking to roll out its strategy of selling platform technology to publishers as a white label solution, so they can use its technology for their own app.
Kayser described this as “looking at how a German publisher or UK publisher will be interested in licensing some of the technology of the Cafeyn platform, as we’ve done very successfully in France”.
Cafeyn also wants to ultimately provide tiered offers such as family or duo subscriptions, which are already available in France, on the Readly platform. Some 10% of new subscribers come via these packages in France.
“So that’s something we’ll be also looking at, giving you access to multiple profiles and potentially more functionalities over time,” said Kayser.
Readly’s Nordic operations remain owned and operated by Bonnier News.
Anders Eriksson, chief executive of Bonnier News , said the deal enables both Bonnier and Cafeyn to “focus on their respective growth strategies”.
“We now look forward to further developing and growing Readly in the Nordic markets, as an important and integrated part of our business, and would like to thank Cafeyn for their collaboration and engagement throughout the process.
“We are confident they now have a solid platform for driving growth in markets outside the Nordics.”
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