We are a bit disappointed with Avanti Screenmedia [1] 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 [2] 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 [3] 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.