London – Barcroft Media announced on May 22 that it has signed a content deal with Yahoo subsidiary GyaO! – Japan’s largest free video streaming site.

GyaO!, which generates over 191 million page views per month, has launched a dedicated Barcroft TV channel featuring short form factual content optimised for a Japanese audience. The deal sees Barcroft Media supplying 30 videos a month to Gyao! via a revenue share agreement.

Barcroft TV’s Japanese distributor Stand TV facilitated the deal following an introduction during PACT’s (Producer’s Alliance for Cinema and Television) recent delegation to Japan.

The GyaO! deal follows an explosive period of growth in global viewing numbers for Barcroft Media’s short form content, particularly through the company’s YouTube channel Barcroft TV. Barcroft TV’s subscriber base has grown from 26,000 to over 470,000 and seen total video views growing from 58 million to over 439 million currently.

The content agreement with GyaO! is the latest deal on a major third party web platform for Barcroft Media, following deals with MSN UK, Yahoo Screen and China’s answer to YouTube, YouKu. Barcroft content is set to gain more than 1 billion views worldwide over the next 12 months across all platforms.

Barcroft TV is currently the world’s second biggest YouTube news channel. The USA represents nearly a third of all video views and the UK, Canada, India, and Germany complete Barcroft TV’s top 5 territories.

“We’re delighted to sign with GyaO! After an incredible year of growth this deal takes us a significant step forward in our mission to become the leading global provider of short form factual content,” said Barcroft Media CEO Sam Barcroft.

“We are very happy to introduce Barcroft Media’s incredible content to Japanese viewers. We think our Japanese audience will be enthralled by Barcroft TV’s look at the amazing side of life,” said Kenichi Tashiro, Leader of the Content Business Group at GyaO Corporation.

“Nothing like Barcroft TV exists for a Japanese audience – I’m confident that it will be a big success in Japan”, said Shinji Nishimura, CEO of Stand Inc who brokered the deal.

Barcroft TV’s content strategy is focused on portraying the ‘amazing side of life’ and features globally popular video categories including extreme sports, super fans and enthusiasts and amazing natural world and wildlife videos.

Barcroft Productions, the TV production arm of the business also creates series programming for traditional broadcast channels such as Discovery, TLC, Channel 5, National Geographic Channel and Animal Planet. Barcroft TV serves as an incubation channel for Barcroft Productions as the business continues to provide optimised broadcast programming, pre tested and popular for a global audience.

Barcroft TV has been shortlisted for a Broadcast Digital Award 2014 for Best Original Web Channel.