Not every title in a distributor’s catalogue can find an international buyer right away. Distributors who engage in vertical integration can easily address this by licensing directly onto their own service, and for those looking to sell to third parties, it can be difficult to find a local buyer with the desired budget for acquisition. Frustratingly for local buyers, it's also not always easy to find these older series that are still available in the first window.
Show Tracker reveals how many shows that premiered originally in the 2018/19 season have yet to have a first window sale across multiple markets.
English-speaking markets such as Australia, Canada, UK and US naturally have the fewest numbers of unsold US and UK series. The markets that have the largest number of unsold series are India, Italy, Poland and Latin America. In Brazil, the local SVOD Globoplay does help bring the total number of unsold series down below the standard set by Mexico.
Comedies are the titles most likely to have trouble finding a home in Italy, while in India it is instead Drama series. Despite the high numbers of unsold series in markets such as these, the opportunity is still out there to make a delayed sale. Many local Free TV services in EMEA for instance have started to acquire content that is older in order to help balance budgets. Acquiring older series with multiple seasons ahead allows a cheaper way to test the audience demand for a show before then acquiring all of its subsequent seasons at a later date. Germany and France are both strong examples of this type of strategy from Free TV.
Local buyers in Germany such as ProSieben have led the growing reliance of Free TV in the market on titles that are at least two years old. As these series are still acquired in the first window, they do remain new to the market despite the delay following their original debut in their home country. France has not acquired a new show within one year for four seasons, with the 2023/24 season so far breaking a long established trend with TF1’s acquisition of ‘Poker Face’ from Paramount - just under 12 months after its debut on Peacock in the US.
India’s local services now may soon follow the trends seen in France and Germany, as Viacom18’s JioCinema in particular has started to acquire a number of older series this season.
NBCUniversal has been the most active seller of older titles so far this year, selling four first windows to JioCinema in India alongside an increasingly rare Netflix first window sale of ‘Hacks’ in Italy. Vertical integration still has its place in 2024 for older titles, with ‘The Equalizer’ going to SkyShowtime, the joint venture between Paramount and NBCUniversal. Sony meanwhile has managed to sell the oldest series in a first window this year, taking its adaptation of ‘Snatch’ onto Viaplay in the Nordics and ‘Schooled’ onto Pay TV in India, over five years after either show originally debuted in the US.
The opportunity is always there to sell previously unsold series, and even when they are several years old, a first window acquisition can hold a lot of value for a local service. Keeping an eye on this activity in Show Tracker is the best way for distributors to find targets to approach with their older titles, and for buyers to find older series that are still available in the first window.
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