French multinational mass media company Vivendi SA has acquired French video site Dailymotion for $242 million.

The price was less than the $273 million mentioned when details of an offer of acquisition first surfaced in April, but the lower figure is due to the transaction occurring in Euro’s, the exchange value of which as dropped since that time.

Founded in 2005, Dailymotion is the world’s second most visited video site with 128 million monthly unique visitors a month.

Ranked as the 85th most popular website online according to Alexa, Dailymotion has had an interesting ownership history, having been acquired by Orange SA in 2013 for $168 million after having raised $68.5 million in funding previously from investors including Fonds Stratégique d’Investissement, Atlas Venture, Advent Venture Partners, Idinvest Partners and Partech Ventures.

Orange, though, wanted out, and Hong Kong telco Pacific Century Group Holdings Ltd. showed interest in buying the company, however the French Government expressed opposition to its acquisition on pure nationalistic and xenophobic grounds.

The name Vivendi may not be well known outside of Europe, but one company it owns is: Universal Music Group, who has artists on its books including Mariah Carey, Rihanna, Maroon 5, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Fergie, Justin Bieber and Nicki Minaj.

“The integration within Vivendi offers Dailymotion the means to strongly accelerate its growth and continue its international expansion,” Vivendi said in a statement.

“It gives the company access to particularly attractive music and audiovisual content and allows for the joint development, together with the Universal Music Group and Canal+ Group teams, of original and distinctive content and formats meeting the expectations of a whole new generation of digital consumers.”

It can’t hurt

Dailymotion isn’t a bad company or service for that matter, and its numbers are highly impressive by any stretch of the imagination, but when your main competitor in YouTube is a 300 pound Gorilla and at best you’re maybe the size of a cat, it’s an enormous task to compete with that.

Of course, Daily Motion doesn’t have to, but ultimately that’s what Vivendi will be aiming at now it owns the company. The acquisition certainly can’t hurt Dailymotion’s chances, and if Vivendi leverages its other businesses to promote the site, the company may see increasing traffic in the years ahead.

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