Thumbplay, a mobile entertainment company, announced today that it has raised $18 million in new capital. Thumbplay will use the seed money to expand its direct-to- consumer product offerings, in addition to further developing the tools it provides 
content owners, creators, publishers and brand marketers. The company plans to accelerate its strategic growth plans and to expand internationally in 2008 to meet the growing demand for mobile entertainment content around the world.
“Thumbplay’s unique off-deck model for selling a wide variety of mobile entertainment content to consumers has already proven to be very successful here in the U.S. and we’re now ready to extend the positive customer experience we already deliver to the millions of mobile consumers all around the world,” said Are Traasdahl, Thumbplay’s CEO and founder.
Thumbplay has over 80,000 pieces of mobile entertainment under license, including ringtones, wallpapers, games, videos, voice tones and text-based services.
The Series E round of investment was led by Brookside Capital Partners, the public equity affiliate of Bain Capital, and Cross Creek Capital, a private equity affiliate of Wasatch Advisors.
“The high quality of our new investors is very significant, since both typically invest in companies which offer opportunities to realize substantial long-term capital appreciation,” said Are Traasdahl. “This is a testament to Thumbplay’s ongoing success.”
During the last quarter of 2007, Thumbplay announced deals to integrate its mobile entertainment content catalog into the Web and mobile portals of AOL and MSN Mobile, as well as iLike, one of the Web’s leading social music discovery services. Earlier this year, Thumbplay signed a digital distribution agreement to add content from Sony BMG Music Entertainment’s artists to Thumbplay’s already diverse mobile entertainment content catalog.
