Tamedia joins Tilllate

 The media company Tamedia is acquiring a stake in the leading Swiss nightlife platform Tilllate.com. With retroactive effect from July 1, Tamedia is initially acquiring 20 percent of the share capital of the newly founded company Tilllate Switzerland. The stake is to be increased to 49 percent by the beginning of 2010. "Tamedia is thus expanding its involvement in the online market and tapping into an interesting new target group," says Tamedia spokeswoman Sonja Levy. The cooperation is intended in particular to strengthen the existing collaboration between 20 Minuten and Tilllate in the print and online sectors. To date, the cooperation has consisted of a partnership between the websites and the exchange of services. Every Monday, 20 Minuten prints the event photos taken by 350 different party photographers and includes editorial content from the nightlife platform on its website.
Further projects are being considered, but are not yet ready to go ahead, Levy continued. An expansion to other Tamedia publications - such as Züritipp, which still collects its own event data - is not planned. For the time being, the participation will therefore not have any personnel consequences.
The operational management of Tilllate will remain with the current owners Christian Hagman (Operations), Silvan Mühlemann (IT), Markus Popp (Marketing) and André Schraner (Finance). Tilllate's business activities outside Switzerland are not affected by the partnership. The parties have agreed not to disclose the amount paid for the investment.