Irish prodco Animo scoops Global Entertainment Formats Pitch with The Ultimate Hustle

Pitch finalists (L-R) Manuel Feijoo, Ignacio Matas, Ana Ortiz-Tallo, Jean Hur, Lorraine O’Donovan (winner for The Ultimate Hustle), Adele Reeves, Katie Lafferty, Anna Botka and Kyle Whitelaw

CONTENT LONDON: The winner of the Content London Global Entertainment Formats Pitch for 2023 is The Ultimate Hustle, entered by Irish production company Animo TV.

Animo currently focuses on documentaries and the new project is part of its strategy to break into the global formats business.

The Ultimate Hustle was selected from 80 entries and will receive a £30,000 (US$38,000) marketing prize from C21 Media to support development and pre-sale promotion of the show.

A final pitch involving eight finalists was hosted by AJ McLean of The Backstreet Boys at Content London this afternoon.

The winning format was unveiled by Jan Salling, head of BBC Studios Nordics and co-chair of FRAPA. He said: “It was a privilege to hear about the eight fantastic, creative formats that made the final selection. They were brilliantly developed and pitched with passion.”

In The Ultimate Hustle, 10 broke but hopeful wannabe entrepreneurs live together for 25 days. With a strict rule book and under the guidance of a presenter (a self-made entrepreneur) they try a new ‘side-hustle’ each week, competing to make the most money from each hustle they try. The person who banks the least each week goes home. The twist is that the winner of the series gets to keep all the cash while the others go home empty-handed.

The Global Entertainment Formats Pitch is a cornerstone of the three-day Formats & Factual strand at Content London 2023 and is designed to discover and develop a new international hit format in one of the following two categories: primetime entertainment or reality/social experiment.

The event showcased eight projects that were pitched live at Content London today. The pitch, now in its second year, allows international format producers to present their projects through C21Media and Content London, providing a high-profile showcase to offer new shows to the world.

The full list of nominees can be found here.