This is a very special moment for the content business, where the central markets —USA and Western Europe— have strong budget and structure reductions mainly due to the OTT production bubble crisis + the broadcasters’ difficulty to keep advertisement income levels. How can Central and Eastern Europe region take advantage of this picture and push a better market for the future? CEE has pros and cons as all the regions… if the formers are developed, everything will be easier.
Pros: CEE has emergent economies that has a lot to grow from now. In TV business, most of the countries are now producing, generating films and series that are getting better but continuing economic vs. the usual Western European countries. There are many small countries with their own languages, which is a problem for pan-regional networks, but opens more market for niche local OTT channels. The digital development is growing fast too, there are hundreds of new channels appearing, for many different audiences. Especially, 2-3 big media groups hold TV channels in many countries, so global strategies can be deployed.
Cons: the empty half of the glass, in the listed items above. The region has emergent economic but still weak or not stable, apart from Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and a couple of countries more. The own production must still evolve, just few countries catch up with the international standards, so the others are low-cost, low-level opportunities. The different languages for many ventures are more a problem than an opportunity… and we have the Russia-Ukraine war, of course. Apart from all the so terrible war facts, it stops regional commercial activities and put aside two of the biggest countries in the region.
What to do, then? What emergent regions use to do… to set up production hubs, to develop entertainment projects between many countries. To attract Western European content ventures to CEE territories based on lower costs, fiscal and production incentives, etc. Budapest, Warsaw, are already good poles of investments, but many other cities/zones can be upgraded. Also, it would be important to make the region a referent in such genre or kind of programming, as Korea got for the dramas, Latin America for the telenovelas, Japan for the entertainment formats, etc. The region is good for action, thriller films so far, for daily comedies… to push more of the good assets.
The CEE advantage? Central & Eastern Europe is an excellent region to invest when the central markets are complicated, closer and better than others. There are budget problems as everywhere, but it is easier to find opportunities and make businesses grow. Many broadcasters are getting better, the OTTs are to give an important step ahead… the synergy of the whole region together is important, as it can be seen with three CEE events in June. Let’s check if during them, the good evolution takes shape.
Nicolás Smirnoff
