NATPE Budapest: fresh energy brings new business opportunities

Clearly, there is a fresh energy between sellers and buyers and a genuine will to generate new businesses.

JP Bommel, President and CEO of NATPE: ‘With buyer registrations at the 350 plus mark and more than 200 sellers, we are delighted to return to Budapest and look forward to putting on a great show. Many companies throughout the region have been unable to travel until now and coming to Budapest to network face to face is a great step forward for everyone’.

He added: ‘We are very pleased to see a strong line-up of Studios join us here, hot on the heels of the May Screenings, as well as a plethora of local content with international potential from the CEE region’. US Studios here are A+E, Lionsgate, NBCUniversal Global Distribution and Paramount Global Content Distribution, which are also holding screenings. Additionally, YLE Finland as well as the Ukrainian Content Association are hosting screenings at the hotel.

While this year seems to be a big enthusiasm, there are also concerns and caution, especially due to the war in Ukraine that had disrupted the economy and the CEE region: as a general rule, global companies are not buying content from and to Russia and this had a clear impact in the industry.

The national pavilion #StandWithUkraine is hosting half a dozen of companies offering their contents in the market. Evgeniy Drachov, sales director, Film UA described an industry affected by war: ‘We keep working in the most extremes circumstances focusing our production on feeding the buyers’ interest on Ukrainian culture and historic characteristics’. 

NATPE Budapest also welcomed a number of international pavilions including the ICEX (Spain) and ITO (Turkey). New exhibitors are in the Hungarian capital: the Polish Public Television’s TVP, ABC (Japan), Yes Studios (Israel), Leonine (Germany) and TRT-MISTCO (Turkey).

RTVE, Atresmedia, Mediterraneo, Onza, The Mediapro Studio and Filmax are the Spanish companies at Budapest. Some of them have underlined to PRENSARIO a ‘re-birth of interest’ on Spanish-speaking content. ‘Buyer’s interest is mostly focused of urban, romantic and office drama’, they agreed. The CEE industry is also showing a ‘rejuvenated interest’ on Latin American content, and it seems to happen that sellers of this region are working as a block.

Given the high consumption of TV during the pandemic, buyers show a strong interest on movies, fictional and documental material from the English, French and Turkish speaking countries to keep the offer fresh in the complex ecosystem of Free TV and OTT, etc.

Mariano Gutiérrez Alarcón, from Budapest