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SVoD buyers set to descend on Cannes

The delegates list at next month’s Mipcom will include close to 500 buyers from SVoD and VoD services, according to organiser Reed Midem at its annual pre-event press conference.

Laurine Garaude

Laurine Garaude, director of Reed Midem’s television division, said she anticipated there would be more than 14,000 participants in Cannes next month, at least 4,800 of them buyers.

Of those, around 500 will be from VOD services including new businesses sending delegates for the first time, such as Latin America’s ClaroVideo and ShowMax in Europe.

Garaude said 70 companies will be exhibiting for the first time this year, including WME and China’s Tencent.

A UK pavilion has also been added, with companies such as 3DD Productions, Dogwoof, Jetpack Distribution and Magnify Media among the dozen indies making use of it. The country’s indie trade body Pact had previously withdrawn its pavilion at the event due to cost concerns and Reed Midem has pressed ahead with its own facility for UK companies as a result.

The country focus at the event, which is running under the catchline The Global Race for Greater Connections, is Russia, and specifically Russia’s Content Revolution.

Garaude said of the theme: “There is very strong competition going on in terms of the number of programmes being produced of a very high quality, and that’s driving global players to devise multi-local strategies and local players to seek global reach.”

Previously announced keynotes come from the event’s personality of the year, Discovery Communications’ supremo David Zaslav, as well as National Geographic’s CEO Courteney Monroe, HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler and Facebook’s head of global creative strategy Ricky Van Veen.

It was announced yesterday that SnapChat’s VP of content Nick Bell and senior director of content programming Sean Mills will also be keynoting this year.

Premieres will include Sony’s espionage drama Counterpart, with star JK Simmons in attendance, and the Amazon and Sky Vision coproduction Britannia.

MipJunior, the event’s traditional curtain raiser, will take place at The Marriott this year with more than 1,600 participants and 1,400 programmes and projects in its screening library. Andy Yeatman, head of global kids’ content at Netflix, and Fred Seibert, founder of Frederator Networks, will keynote there.

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