Digital content company Moonbug acquires YouTube channel Little Angel

Little Angel, a network of child-focused YouTube channels, has almost 90 million subscribers and generates about 1.5 billion views a month

Moonbug has acquired Little Angel, a network of child-focused YouTube channels that generate about 1.5 billion views a month. Photo: Little Angel

Moonbug Entertainment, which produces CoComelon, the most popular children’s show on Netflix, thinks it has found its next big hit.

Moonbug has acquired Little Angel, a network of child-focused YouTube channels that generate about 1.5 billion views a month.

The company did not disclose the terms of the transaction, which is its first deal since it was acquired by Candle Media, an entertainment company run by two former Walt Disney executives.

The main Little Angel channel produces animated videos set to nursery rhymes and songs for children and has about 27 million subscribers on YouTube. Another channel, Little World, also specialises in songs but has a much smaller audience. In all, its channels have almost 90 million subscribers.

Moonbug buys children's shows that first become popular on YouTube and builds them into global entertainment franchises.

It produces TV episodes based on the characters from CoComelon that rank among the most-watched programmes on Netflix in the US. The company has also licensed CoComelon and another show, Blippi, starring Stevin John and Kaitlin Becker, for toys and other merchandise.

Little Angel has many of the same attributes as those properties — animation, addictive songs and a growing audience. But its current owner, Valnet, has yet to expand it much beyond YouTube or market the show in many territories.

“We are putting it into our machine,” Moonbug chief executive Rene Rechtman said. “We’ll create more content, we’ll internationalise it and we’ll start distributing it on global platforms.”

Mr Rechtman said Little Angel reminded him of CoComelon when his company bought it in July 2020, only the show is a bit edgier and its audience skews a year or two older.