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Tag: Abhishekh Rege

  • Banijay to acquire Endemol Shine in $2.2 billion deal

    Banijay to acquire Endemol Shine in $2.2 billion deal

    MUMBAI: Now that’s what we call a mother of an acquisition. French production company Banijay Group  – which is headed in Asia by Deepak Dhar – has announced that it will acquire the Walt Disney: Appollo Global Management-owned Endemol Shine Group at a sticker price of $2.2 billion.

    A press release stated that the deal will encompass Endemol Shine’s 120 production labels with an estimated 66,000 hours of scripted and non-scripted programming together with over 4,300 registered formats. Upon completion of the acquisition, Banijay Group will own almost 200 production companies in 23 territories and the rights for close to 100,000 hours of content. The merged entity will have around 100,000 hours of content, making it the largest non-US production outfit. Total pro-forma revenue of the combined group is expected to be approximately $3.3 billion for the year ending 31 December 2019.

    Parleys for a deal between the two have been going on for more than 18 months now. The asking price early on was a humungous $4 billion, which lead to other interested parties like talent agency Endeavor and ITV losing interest quickly.

    The acquisition will be financed through a capital increase of Banijay Group and committed debt financing, which includes a committed full refinancing of Banijay and Endemol Shine’s existing financial debt, supported by Deutsche Bank, Natixis and Société Générale. Endemol Shine’s respective debt was approximately $486 million ($539.5 million) and $1.83 billion ($2 billion) as of December 2018. Postclosing, the combined group will be held by LDH (67.1 per cent ) and Vivendi (32.9 per cent).

    LDH is a holding company controlled by Financière LOV (52 per cent), Banijay chairman Stéphane Courbit’s investment arm. LDH has the following other shareholders: the Italian Group De Agostini with 36 per cent  of the capital, and Fimalac, the investment company of Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, which will own 12 per cent of the capital through a reserved capital increase dedicated to the financing of the Endemol Shine acquisition. In addition to a direct investment in LDH, Fimalac will reinforce its long-term partnership with Financière LOV by increasing its stake in Financière LOV from 5.75 per cent to 8.4 per cent.

    The press release stated that: “Boosting Banijay Group’s scripted credentials and further building its reputation as a go-to provider of high-quality unscripted IP, the combined catalogue is expected to include some of the world’s best known brands and formats such as Black Mirror, Versailles, The Millennium Trilogy, Peaky Blinders, Big Brother, MasterChef, Survivor, Temptation Island, Wife Swap and The Island. Furthermore, with a significantly broader brand portfolio, and larger creative platform, the combined group will be in an even stronger position to create, nurture and drive fresh IP for both linear broadcasters and new players.”

    “Endemol Shine brings an incredible array of industry-leading talent, globally-renowned brands and high-quality creative content. Combining the resources of these two companies will instantly strengthen our position in the global market, and our capabilities across genres will further define us as a go-to provider of first class IP worldwide. Welcoming the Endemol Shine brands and talents to our existing business will signal enhanced opportunities in the marketplace, and we are all excited by what the future holds for the combined entity,” said Banijay CEO Marco Bassetti.

    “At Endemol Shine, we have continually inspired and entertained audiences around the world, a testament to every single person across the Group. This deal takes us into a whole new and exciting chapter and into a new enhanced global content house with many opportunities ahead,” added Endemol Shine Group CEO Sophie Turner Laing.

    The merger – when it is approved by the authorities  – is likely to lead to a rationalisation of manpower at both the groups.

    In India, Endemol Shine is amongst the top three production companies by revenue and is headed by CEO Abhishekh Rege. The overseas merger will probably result in him once again reporting to his former Endemol Shine India boss Deepak Dhar who has since gone on to set up Banijay Asia. The latter has been on an overdrive and in a very short span of time has emerged as amongst the top 10 producers in India. The Rajeash Kamat, Paul Aiello-headed Emerald Media group is one of the equity owners in Endemol Shine India.

  • Inside India’s dubbing and subtitling industry

    Inside India’s dubbing and subtitling industry

    MUMBAI: The dubbing and subtitling industry in India was founded due to the television business’ need to leverage a variety of content from within different markets in the country. Indian viewers first tasted dubbed content thanks to Discovery World. In the early 90’s, dubbing was predominantly restricted to kids’ animation content by Disney. This was then picked up by private broadcasters as a fixed slot for kids that later evolved into a dedicated kids channel available in multiple languages. The first dub theatrical hit was Jurassic Park, which opened the Pandora’s box for cult South Indian films like Roja. Thus, a degree of variety and freshness was injected into Indian programming.

    Demand for localised content has grown

    Today, dubbing and subtitling is a flourishing business in India with Hollywood films, animation films and regional content at the heart of it. This wasn’t the case few years ago when only international content was dubbed for the Indian market. In India dubbing mostly happens in three Indian languages- Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. Spider-Man 3 was dubbed in Bhojpuri in addition to Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. A Good Day to Die Hard, the most recent instalment in the Die Hard franchise, was the first ever Hollywood film to receive a Punjabi language dub as well.

    In 1983, PA Krishnan founded the Dubbing Artistes Union of South India, an association for dubbing artistes. The union, which is now called South Indian Cine and Television Artistes and Dubbing Artistes Union, has over 2,000 artistes and more than 30 voice co-ordinators or dubbing agents (people who choose dubbing artistes) as its members. It is also affiliated to the Film Employees Federation of South India (FEFSI). 

    The surge and infusion of international content entering India and demand to watch it in native language has witnessed a steady rise. Serials and small-format shows from Tamil and Bengali are now being dubbed and subtitled in many Indian and foreign languages.

    Major dubbing companies have now given way to smaller players like BOL Media, Native Ninja, VSI Group, etc. UTV shut down five years back, while Crest Animation pulled the plug on its operations almost 10 years ago. In terms of corporate players only Prime Focus still exists. 

    Amazon Prime and Netflix are spending big on content localisation. They are also producing original Indian content that is being dubbed for international markets. Among the global OTT players, a major growth driver is Netflix, which launched its global video on demand (SVOD) service in January 2016. It has now 104 million paid subscribers in 190 countries and the service supports 24 languages.

    “ZEEL has a Bollywood movie pay television channel in Spanish language called ZEE Mundo. So, a lot of Indian content is travelling overseas now. Recently Aamir Khan’s movie also got dubbed in China and people over there loved it,” says BOL Media Founder and CEO Rahul Bhatia highlighting the evolution of India’s dubbing and subtitling industry.

    Economics of dubbing and subtitling industry

    The dubbing industry in India is valued anywhere between Rs 100-120 crore. Interestingly, the bigger companies are now giving way to smaller ones. The key reason behind this development has been the exodus of influential executives from major players setting up their own dubbing businesses.

    The mushrooming of smaller companies has greatly benefited broadcasters and production houses that now have access to more technical resources at pocket-friendly prices. For instance, it now costs Rs 15,000 to dub a television episode as compared to Rs 80,000 in the past. Today, a three-hour movie costs Rs. three lakh when dubbed for a television audience and around Rs. 15 lakh for the theatres.

    In the general entertainment space, dubbing and executing one episode takes four days while subtitling of one hour content takes two days. However, a movie for the television audience is dubbed in approximately 15 day while that for a theatre could need up to 30. While dubbing has become cheaper, content translation charges have witnessed a spike.

    Translators charge Rs. 1 per word for an Indian movie and Rs. 10 for a foreign film, while dubbing costs vary between Rs. 80 to Rs. 130 per minute for one movie.

    “There are very few corporate structures having an entire team of dubbing directors, sound engineers, quality controllers in house with defined SLA and workflows. Rest of the dubbing companies are owned and operated by studio owners, voice actors or dubbing producers with a niche clientele. Majority of the companies assemble the team and work on a project-to-project basis,” says Native Ninja founder Sanjeev Das.

    The road ahead

    Dubbing companies acquire customers organically. The major chunk of the business is comes from the television industry. But going forward, OTT platform could be the biggest source of business. Around 60 percent of the business comes from the television industry, 30 per cent from movies and remaining 10 per cent from OTT. In the future, OTT is likely to contribute 60 percent of the dubbing business.

    The business will be on a steady growth path due to the increased volume of content being created with a focus on localisation. Dubbing, subtitling, and closed captioning for English and major international languages could be taken over by technology such as artificial Intelligence, machine learning, automated captioning and auto-translation. However, precise and accurate translation, adaptation, interpretation and translation will always require a human touch. That’s where localisation companies need to be at the top of their game. With such advancements, the industry is bound to witness a shake up in the next five years, with only those prepared to adapt to the challenges likely to survive and thrive.