Beta, Red Bull reveal football dramas

MIPTV: German distributor and producer Beta Film has linked up with Austria’s Red Bull to produce a series of interconnected, big-budget dramas.

Moritz von Kruedener

The joint venture will see Beta and Red Bull’s Media House division working together on a series of scripted shows titled The Net, which is inspired by true events related to football.

Five separate dramas will explore activities around the game, delving into the glamour and lifestyles of players and using real-life events involving bribery, drugs and match-fixing as inspiration for story lines.

The shows, based on a concept from theatre veterans Matthias Hartmann and Plinio Bachmann, consist of five standalone programmes of eight episodes each.

Storyline strands will run throughout each programme, with recurring characters in each show, creating a 40-hour series in total.

Each show can be viewed as a standalone programme or together with the other four programmes and will be produced in a different country with its own production company.

Shows will be produced in English and local languages, with Beta and the writers overseeing storylines across the five programmes.

Details of local partners are yet to be revealed, but C21 understands the shows are planned to air in 2021/22, with deals in Italy and Germany already in the works.

The budgets have yet to be confirmed but it is believed figures of around €2m per episode are being considered.

Moritz von Kruedener, Beta Film’s MD, said the project was “a unique framework of five character-driven, suspenseful series, each of them specific and authentic to its territory, while forming a part of an epic global story.”

The show will not feature match footage but rather the events around the games, with von Kruedener adding that the shows would be “football as it has never been seen it before.”

News of the JV initially emerged earlier this year, when Germany’s competition watchdog reviewed proposals for the move.

Red Bull Media House, the energy drink maker’s multiplatform media division, already boasts Austrian channel ServusTV as well as Vienna-based Terra Mater Factual Studios, which focuses on production and distribution for TV, cinema and multimedia platforms.

Its recent productions include award-winning documentary The Ivory Game.

Beta, meanwhile, has dramatically expanded its international operations in recent years, including the 2016 launch of Stockholm-based Dramacorp, a joint venture with drama executive Patrick Nebout that focuses on the development and production of high-concept dramas with international market appeal.

Dramacorp’s TV projects include sci-fi drama Rare, while Beta has also partnered with Norwegian broadcaster NRK on the international roll-out of hit teen drama Skam and recently boarded Sky Deutschland’s latest original series, Pagan Peak, an adaptation of Scandinavian drama format The Bridge.

The company, which has enjoyed success with current German TV hits like Sky Deutschland’s Babylon Berlin and Vox’s Red Bracelets, the German version of the hit Spanish show, is also in the process of forming a TV production JV with ZDF Enterprises.