• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, June 3, 2014

Gas Station TV, one of the country’s largest gas station-based video networks, has been acquired by a group of investors led by Rockbridge Growth Equity, a private equity firm based in Detroit, in partnership with GSTV’s management, the companies announced Tuesday.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
 
GSTV currently claims a monthly viewership of 50 million via its network of video displays in gas pumps at over 2,600 gas stations across the U.S., with content partners including ESPN, CNN’s Headline News and Buzz Today, Bloomberg TV, and AccuWeather.

CEO David Leider is staying with the company after the acquisition.
 
Rockbridge Growth Equity was founded in 2007 by investors including Dan Gilbert, the founder and chairman of Quicken Loans and Rock Ventures. Other investors in the GSTV deal include Falcon Investments and Michigan Growth Capital Partners, which is co-managed by Grosvenor Capital Management and Beringea.
 
The acquisition should give GSTV access to funding for further expansion. Back in 2011, Gas Station TV secured an investment valued at $50 million from Wayne, a GE Energy business, to deploy the latter’s inOvationTV media platform to thousands of gas stations nationwide. In December 2013, Wayne and GSTV announced that InOVationTV will be available to gas retailers that purchase Wayne Ovation fuel dispensers nationwide.
 
Back in January, one of GSTV’s main competitors, Outcast Media, was acquired by Gilbarco Veeder-Root, the world’s largest manufacturer of gas pumps, point-of-sale systems and related gas station equipment. Outcast now operates as Gilbarco’s media business unit, using Gilbarco’s Applause TV technology to drive convenience store sales while delivering entertainment content to gas station customers.
 
At the time of the acquisition by Gilbarco, Outcast claimed to reach 36 million viewers per month via over 20,000 screens across the U.S., citing figures from Nielsen. The partners hope to increase that number to 100 million viewers per month by giving Outcast access to Gilbarco’s customer base of 60,000 gas stations .