All3Media is weighing up expansion opportunities overseas, according to chief executive Jane Turton.
Superindie All3Media is the largest UK consolidator according to Broadcast’s Indie Survey, with a UK production turnover of £486.3 million. It owns many of the UK’s top production companies, including Studio Lambert, Raw TV, Neal Street Productions and Two Brothers Pictures.
Turton told IBC365 she wants to grow All3 further and remains open to “good acquisitions” and funding new start-ups, on top of organic growth.
Future acquisitions look likely to include more overseas companies. Compared to competitors like ITV Studios, BBC Studios, Fremantle, Endemol Shine, Banijay and Red Arrow, Turton said that All3 is quite “narrow in terms of geography.”
The majority of All3Media’s companies are in the UK, while it also has a significant presence in the US and Germany.
“I think we will now look more at overseas production. We have been looking at it, but our focus has mainly been North America.”
Turton added: “We have been looking at the Nordics, at some of the southern European markets.”
All3Media International opened a Singapore office in 2016, which it is using to explore Asian markets. Australia and Israel are markets of interest, said Turton. “We’re always open to conversations, but they often fall down – like the British ones – on talent and IP.”
Turton explained that one of the reasons that All3 wants to continue to grow is because “we are convinced that scale does matter.” That, she explains, is largely because the business of television is now much more complex than it used toal be, amid huge change in viewing habits, rights deals and budgets – and that companies with a large portfolio of shows and production companies are better placed to navigate the changed landscape.
Since Turton took over in 2015, All3Media has expanded heavily in scripted, acquiring Neal Street Productions (Call the Midwife, Penny Dreadful, Informer) in 2015; New Pictures (The Missing, The Spanish Princess) in 2016; and Two Brothers Pictures (Fleabag, The Widow) in 2017.
The drama growth has been organic too. Studio Lambert launched a scripted division in 2015 run by Susan Hogg, winning a BAFTA for its first drama Three Girls. Lime Pictures, meanwhile, has broadened out from producing Hollyoaks to making other young adult drama including Netflix’s Free Rein and Disney’s The Evermore Chronicles.
Jane Turton will be speaking at a Global Content Gamechangers session on 13 September and in The business of drama: How industries can learn from innovative funding models Leaders Forum on 12 September.
- IBC2019 takes place 13-17 September at the Rai, Amsterdam
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