LADbible Group Limited, part of LBG Media plc,[2] is a British digital publisher. Its headquarters is in Manchester and it has offices in London, Dublin, Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland. Founded in 2012 by Alexander "Solly" Solomou and Arian Kalantari, LADbible Group produces digital content aimed at young adults,[3] claiming to reach two-thirds of 18–34-year-olds in the UK.[4] LADbible Group publishes original and acquired content,[5][6] including editorial, video, and documentary material, some of which is broadcast live. Their content covers entertainment and celebrity interviews, as well as news and current affairs. They also run campaigns on subjects intended to interest a young market, such as mental health, the environment and political matters.
LADbible Group's media has five websites. Its brands include LADbible, UNILAD, GAMINGbible, SPORTbible, and Tyla,[7] among many others. They claim to generate at least 28billion content views globally every year.[8] It has its own in-house creative team, Joyride, set up in 2016, who work with clients to help them reach LADbible Group's younger audience of 18–34 year-olds through creative campaigns.[7] In 2021, LADbible launched its own in-house production arm, LADstudios, which focuses on factual entertainment programming as well as documentary content.[9]
History
Solomou developed the idea for a social media publishing business while at the University of Leeds, where he studied business management from 2009 to 2012.[10] The Lad Bible Limited was founded on 3 April 2012[11] and developed into the LADbible project when director Arian Kalantari joined.[12] LADbible Group's parent company was originally called The Lad Bible Limited, and changed its name to The Global Social Media Group Limited on 18 November 2013. On 19 June 2014, the parent company changed its name to 65TWENTY LTD, then to Ladbible Group Limited on 16 November 2015.[13]
The LADbible project started in January 2012 when the channel published their first Facebook post which achieved over 75,000 interactions. In 2014, LADbible's Facebook page had almost 2million likes and was attracting over 5million unique users every month.[14] By November 2015, this number had increased more than 400% to 10.6million followers on Facebook.[12] This continued to grow to more than 24.3million followers in May 2017. In 2016, LADbible Group, launched an in-house creative agency, Joyride, to offer advertising on their online platforms. In July 2017, Tubular Labs ranked LADbible as the No.1 'Media & Entertainment Creator' in the world.[15] In the same month, LADbible also achieved No.3 globally in the Top Media & Entertainment Properties, ahead of Time Warner, Comcast and Sony.[16][17]
In October 2018, LADbible Group took over social media rival UNILAD, making it the largest social video publisher ever.[18] In 2019, LADbible Group launched LADbible Australia, followed by SPORTbible Australia. In the same year, they launched LADbible Ireland, claiming to reach almost half of all Irish people each month, and opened an office in Dublin to better service that audience.[19] In May 2021, LADbible Group launched LADbible New Zealand.[20] In December 2021 the company completed a £360m float on the London Stock Exchange's AIM which raised £30m for the group and £81.1m for selling shareholders with the move.[21] In March 2023, LADbible Group completed the acquisition of the social media pages of Lessons Learned in Life (LLIL).[22] In November 2023, LADbible Group announced the launch of their sixth website UNILAD Tech. [23]
Awards
In November 2015, LADbible featured in the Manchester Evening News for winning two awards at the Digital Entrepreneur Awards ceremony. LADbible won the Social Media Campaign of the Year (medium/large) and founder, Solomou, won the Young Digital Entrepreneur of The Year award.[24] In June 2018, LADbible's 'Trash Isles' campaign won eight Cannes Lions Awards at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.[25] The campaign won two Grand Prix awards as well as a further two Gold, one Silver and three Bronze.[26]
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