Fox’s Fernando Szew expects AVoD surge to inject capital into global market

Fernando Szew speaks to C21’s Pina Mezzera at Content Americas

CONTENT AMERICAS: The growth of AVoD is set to bring about an “injection of capital” into the global market, according to Fernando Szew, CEO of fledgling international sales division Fox Entertainment Global.

Speaking at Content Americas in Miami yesterday, Szew praised the new importance of AVoD as a blessing for the global content industry. “It’s brilliant news. There’s loads of money in that market that is yet to find its destination. We have to start providing content to make the AVoD market and its audience grow.

“It’s very good news for content creators. It’s going to be an injection of capital, and the projections are huge. It’s a market that’s just taking off and that is going to bring in lots of capital.”

The head of Fox Entertainment Global, which launched in October, claimed the new company’s opening months had gone “better than expected due to the good energy and positivity we received.”

He added that Fox’s plan to focus on distribution and AVoD, as opposed to creating an additional SVoD service, was a way of monetising original content and striking up copro partnerships.

“We focused on feeding what is now the trend, which is advertising. How do we monetise original content? Through distribution. But we don’t just sell content but also to attract relationships to collectively generate new content,” he said.

Szew talked up Fox’s slate of original content, highlighting the animated adult comedies Krapopolis and Grimsburg as successful titles. He also revealed that Fox has been trialling new primetime comedy series Animal Control, which Szew said is “testing really well” but gave no details about the project.