MindGeek, the company that owns Pornhub and a litany of other adult sites, has been acquired by newly formed private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners (ECP).
ECP, which bills itself as a private equity firm with “vast regulatory, law enforcement, public engagement, and finance experience” that seeks out “investment opportunities in industries that require principled ethical leadership.”
MindGeek marks the firm’s first acquisition and ECP said that it thought the owner of Redtube, Brazzers, and Men.com was “a dynamic tech brand… built upon a foundation of trust, safety and compliance.”
MindGeek, registered in Luxembourg, is currently being sued over sexually explicit videos of minors on its site. Its most recently published figures, MindGeek’s revenue topped US$460 million (AU$690 million) while profit margins have remained as high as 50 per cent.
MindGeek also owns TrafficJunky, an adult industry-focused demand-side platform (DSP) that serves adverts on its range of sites. It works in exactly the same way as any other DSP, with banner, pre-roll, and pop-up ads, as well as homepage takeovers. Plus, TrafficJunky says that it can reach more than 60 million users every day.
ECP believes that it can help position MindGeek as the internet’s most popular platform for adult content and as “the internet leader” in fighting illegal online content thanks to its moderation, verification, and safeguarding tools.
It also thinks that it can unlock “further value by way of investing in world-class content companies, safety technologies, and audience engagement.”
“We are confident that the MindGeek team and all MindGeek platforms operate with trust and safety at the forefront of everything they do. We will be engaging with stakeholders, including content creators, governments and industry to address the misalignment between how MindGeek operates and what the public perceives about this industry and these platforms. We will work with the team to ensure their commitment to trust and safety is communicated clearly with all stakeholders and the public,” said Sarah Bain, founding partner at ECP.
Bain’s colleague, Rocco Meliambro, founded Meta Growth, Canada’s largest cannabis retailer and third-largest cannabis entity in Canada by revenue.
“ECP seeks out investment opportunities in industries that require principled ethical leadership. Our philosophy is rooted in identifying properties amenable to our responsible investment approach and that have the potential to create attractive returns over a compelling time horizon. We believe the adult entertainment industry is being influenced by evolving public views and regulatory approaches, and the time is appropriate for evolving this business,” he added.
“MindGeek is the most dynamic and empowering tech platform in the world. We are proud to support and cultivate a strong community of content creators to express themselves, while also maintaining safe online platforms,” said MindGeek’s traditionally inconspicuous management.
“We are excited for this next chapter of MindGeek. We look forward to working with the ECP team, and are confident that, with their support, we will continue to revolutionize safe, legal, sex-positive tech, and connect adult users around the globe with creators, content, advertising partners and technology they can trust. Thank you to everyone at MindGeek and to our entire community for your unwavering commitment to our core values of Consent, Freedom of Sexual Expression, Authenticity, Originality, and Diversity.”
