Indeed, the company says that as the pandemic continues to keep people away from theatres and sports arenas, many are turning to VPNs and DNS proxies to circumvent the territorial restrictions on content that studios, sports leagues and other content producers rely on for their revenue. It adds that this has driven increased demand for VPN and proxy detection solutions, as rights holders and OTT broadcasters look to protect their content from geo-piracy.

Building on a customer base that includes Amazon Prime, BBC and ITV, GeoComply noted that it is now ramping up for further strong growth in 2021 particularly with national broadcasters. This includes the appointment of James Clark (pictured) as director of global sales. Clark brings to GeoComply over a decade’s experience in content security and was most recently director of the global security business development at Synamedia. Prior to that, he was VP of the content protection and anti-piracy team at Cartesian.

“Content piracy via VPNs and proxies has very real consequences for the entire video streaming ecosystem, including significant job losses and slashed production budgets,” Clark, remarked. “With studios, sports leagues, broadcasters and other rights holders under serious financial pressure because of the pandemic, combating piracy has fast become a top priority. Fortunately, GeoComply’s solution to stop geolocation fraud and geo-piracy is affordable, easy to implement and provides an almost immediate return on investment.”

This appointment follows the news that GeoComply has agreed its first institutional capital with investments from Blackstone Growth and Atairos, an independent investment firm backed by Comcast. The move, marking the first commitment of institutional capital to the company, aims to support GeoComply’s growth in its core markets and help accelerate expansion into new verticals.

“We believe the company is poised for significant further expansion in the years ahead – particularly given their mission-critical role in delivering compliance software solutions to the fast-growing, global online gaming and sports betting industry,” said Blackstone Growth managing director Vishal Amin, commenting on the investment. “We are excited to work closely with [GeoComply] as it looks to further increase the company’s already strong leadership position into new markets and opportunities.”