Avanti Win 2 And 1/2 Malls
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
We are a bit disappointed with Avanti Screenmedia who in an RNS yesterday announced to the world that they had won ‘three new mall contracts’ when with a little bit of research and digging around it was plain to see that it was actually 2 Malls at best and maybe two and a half at a stretch.
This took the shine off for us, what was otherwise a nice announcement. Avanti have gotten into a good habit recently of regularly communicating with the City and investors via RNS and much of the news coming out of them has been positive – including the continued financial support of Neo Media Group who obviously see something good there.
Anyway, the new business for Avanti is made up of the Trafford Centre in Manchester (one of the UK’s largest shopping malls with a weekly audience of 560,000 shoppers a week), the Paradise Forum in Birmingham City Centre and Gloucester Quays – a new shopping development outside the west country city.
Our issue is with the claim that Avanti have won big at the Trafford Centre – VMG actually have the exclusive digital rights to the Trafford Centre (that has not changed) and are in fact continuing at the moment to roll out a large number of digital portrait screens in the Mall.
The ‘deal’ here that Avanti alluded to is actually the digital media rights for a single large LED screen which was previously sold by Titan. Titan continue to sell static 6-sheets as per their contracted rights in the Trafford Centre.
Forgive us if we are being a trifle too cynical but that is not exactly a ‘new contract for shopping mall Trafford Centre’ and it does the industry no good whatsoever to try to insinuate otherwise.
Follow DailyDOOH