CONTENT AMERICAS 2023, held by C21, took place for the first time last week at the Hilton Downtown Miami, USA, replacing the fallen NATPE. It was focused in Latin America. Outcome? Quite well, more considering it was an event organized in just 3 months. Above all, the January slot was saved and the region showed health and energy, with a good amount of buyers (both free TV and OTT platforms) attending with closing deal attitude, and the exhibitors making many announcements and efforts to enhance their offerings. It is a time of alliances, synergies, co-productions, production pools to afford original programming costs. The ‘studios’ companies are on the top due to this trend.
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The organization talked about 1500 registered participants, including 100 exhibitors and 500 buyers. Most of the people that attended was pleased, both buyers and sellers, due to good business and because compared to last NATPE editions, it was a friendly and reduced-costs market, with all known people and very good organization tips in general: clear signaling, conferences, easy parking, etc. Also, the pay TV sector had good presence (cable operators, TV channels, etc.) as always in Miami, but this time was hard to get.
The cons? NATPE used to have 4000 people, 250 exhibitors, 1100 buyers, including also US domestic and 15% European buyers. CA’s both exhibitor map and buyer assistance, had a real one-third or less of those numbers. There were no controls in the access of people, so traffic was distorted. Important buyers didn’t come (as some Brazilian broadcasters, Netflix, most of Disney, etc). It was very valuable the against-time effort, but for next year, a lot is to be done vs. other standard regional events..

Justly, what will happen in January 2024 is the big question. CA vs. the return of NATPE, now below Brunico’s umbrella (REALSCREEN, KIDSCREEN, BANFF). CA says Natpe now is a bad word for many people, and expects to grow 30% next year, in the same hotel. Brunico expects that the tradition of NATPE and handling also the US domestic market, make difference. It will be essential the Latin staff that Brunico hires to compensate the current CA strong empathy to Latin community. Three months ago, C21 defeated the other possible event (DISCOP MIAMI) hiring key Latin industry members and assuming informally, the debt NATPE caused with its last minute cancelled 2022 event.

Main business trends seen at CA? The main new thing vs. before, was that we see less production by exclusive requests, including all rights, as was the dominant option so far. We see more collaborations, alliances, productions hubs, pools, especially co-productions. To produce is more expensive, broadcasters and streamers have less budgets, so ‘twists’ are required. The ‘studios’ are a good response: the evolution of production houses to service centers, very flexible with different business models and partners per project. Telemundo, Secuoya studios, made the main events of the market.

As part of the same trend, the different tips of ‘twists’ are more and more relevant: 360 developments, YOUTUBE synergies, social media, gaming, branded content, podcasts, NFTs, etc. All are good to share costs and expand revenues. The streamers themselves in Latin America? Beyond moving from SVOD to AVOD, they have reduced many of their content projects, especially the high-budget fictions, compensating with more episodes of the mid-range ones. They stress there is no fall but consolidation, and original content is more important than ever, while they start to share screens, rights, etc.

Newest veins? The new players appearing are the investing funds, just taking the financial side of production projects. With less budgets, they can be key players from now. Who learns to deal with them faster and better, will gain market positions. Second, at CA we saw together the content and Pay TV sectors, and convergence opportunities appear. For instance, pay TV vendor players talked about launching ‘XVOD’, which would be to feed cable operators with volume of hours to make up their own AVOD platforms. Also, there are in the region 15,000 ISPs —Internet providers, etc.— which look for add video, but generally they need all, content and platform. Many can be done there.

Nicolás Smirnoff and Francisco Ferreyra

Canadá & USA at the farewell cocktail: Aldo Di Felice, CEO TeleLatino Canada, Al Pérez de la Mesa from APM, Tom Devlin from Entertainment Studios, Gary Marenzi from Legendary Pictures, Jalal Merhi fromFilmOne Canada. Though the event was focused on Latin America, Miami is always open to other regions

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