Almost four months after announcing it acquired the studio behind German-language dubs of Stranger Things and The Crown, Deluxe has announced another acquisition: Post Haste Digital, an audiovisual studio that specializes in English-language dubbing.
“This addition enables us to further scale capacity for owned dubbing studios and expand our mastering and audio services to support our customers’ content and localization strategies,” Deluxe wrote in its Linkedin post announcing the acquisition.
With Post Haste Digital under its belt, the Burbank-based media company has acquired a total of eight companies since 2020, according to a report from Deadline. Post Haste Digital, founded in Los Angeles in 2003, owns three studios in the Los Angeles area and has produced English-language dubs for a lengthy list of series, including Fauda, Lupin, and The House of Flowers. Though financial details were not disclosed to the public, Deadline reported that the deal “is valued in the multiple-seven-figure range.”
Chris Reynolds, Deluxe’s EVP and general manager of worldwide localization and development, told Deadline that the acquisition will help Deluxe improve its ability to meet its clients’ localization demands. Likewise, Post Haste Digital’s founder and CEO said he believes Deluxe’s additional resources will enable the company to meet increased demand while maintaining the high level of quality they strive for.
With the rising popularity and content production of streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+, there’s undoubtedly been an increased demand for media localization services like dubbing and subtitling. Deluxe isn’t the only company acquiring businesses that specialize in media localization, either — in October, TransPerfect acquired the French company Hiventy, which specializes in technical audiovisual services.
As Nimdzi’s Sarah Hickey pointed out in her analysis of TransPerfect’s acquisition of Hiventy, 14 of the companies listed on the 2022 iteration of the Nimdzi 100 identify media localization as one of their primary services. That’s more than twice the number of media localizers that were featured on the same list just four years ago, in 2018. Plus, the combined revenues of media localization companies on the Nimdzi 100 have skyrocketed to $1.6 billion, nearly quadrupling the $420 million in combined revenues from 2018.
“This shows that media localization is no longer a niche service for a select few but has become mainstream,” Hickey wrote.
