The B2B online rights platform Vuulr is returning to the international market in time for MIPCOM after shuttering in 2023, securing fresh investment and installing a new leadership team.
Launched in 2018 out of Singapore, Vuulr operated for five years before economic uncertainty, inflation, and a lack of capital investment resulted in its shuttering in 2023.
Ben Flint co-founded the platform in 2018 and is returning as chief commercial officer. Chris Drumgoole, former co-founder, serves as board advisor, with former partner Marc Rashba back to advise on business development. Ian KcKee, former CEO, exited the platform when it closed down in 2023 and is not returning.
Silvia Kusnirova is on board as chair, having acquired the Vuulr assets in 2024 with Peter Lukes. An original investor in Vuulr, Kusnirova is a former journalist turned strategic communications coach, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. She approached Flint late last year about relaunching the platform with a new model: as a full end-to-end rights transaction platform.
“The original Vuulr was built around an idea that was arguably ahead of its time: that the international content industry needed its own e-commerce infrastructure,” Flint said. “What has changed today is the market around us. Buyers and sellers are under pressure to move faster, find new opportunities, and extract more value from every piece of content they own.
“We’ve had an extraordinary opportunity to start again with everything we learned from the first Vuulr, but without being constrained by it. We are building for the industry as it exists now—and, importantly, for where we believe it is going next. Our ambition remains very simple: to make buying and selling content easier, faster and more efficient. And I believe whether people are listing a catalog, searching for one specific piece of content or building a whole channel, the need for a purpose-built digital infrastructure connecting content buyers and sellers globally has never been stronger.”
Kusnirova added, “As an original investor, I had seen first-hand both the potential of Vuulr and the appetite within the industry. When the opportunity arose to acquire the assets in 2024, I believed there was something genuinely valuable worth preserving—but I also knew that simply restarting the old business wasn’t the answer. The market, technology and economics of the content industry have all moved on. Broadcasters, platforms, distributors and producers are operating under unprecedented pressure to do more with less; buyers are searching across a much wider universe of content; rights owners are looking for new ways to monetize catalogs, and creator-led and new forms of content are entering the professional marketplace. When you factor in how AI can enhance workflows, accelerate discovery, promotion and communication – for example, matching clients with content – the opportunity today is considerably greater than it was when Vuulr first entered the market. I am so excited to back Ben and the team for ‘Vuulr 2.0’, fully confident that it will now be a long-term sustainable business!”
Vuulr officially relaunches to the global market at MIPCOM. Its existing global network includes about 15,000 customers, with the team at work on bringing those clients back and refreshing the catalog information. Its parent company, Vuulr USA, is based in Florida.
