SINGAPORE – AllRites—a Southeast Asian startup providing an online platform to discover, negotiate and purchase content rights—has officially launched the first global B2B marketplace for Asian film, tv, and sports broadcast content. As the first fully operational online platform for content buyers and sellers, the AllRites Marketplace already has over 17,000 hours of available content online, making it the largest Asia-based online trading platform for Asian broadcast content.
AllRites’ 17,000 hours of content is provided by partners including IMG, Mediacorp Singapore, Silver Wolf International, MNC Indonesia, and New Films International, who contribute content across all genres—movies, documentaries, drama, reality TV, music and sports. At the recent global TV and digital content conference MIPTV in Cannes, AllRites met with many European and US content providers. About 50 new Deal Memorandums are being processed at the writing of this press release. Once signed, content is immediately uploaded to the Marketplace.
Riaz Mehta, Founder and CEO of AllRites, said, “The US$2 trillion media and entertainment industry is poised for major technology disruption, given the massive shifts in viewing patterns, the emergence of independent content creators, and the rise of new content types and sources of content. But, the content ecosystem remains highly fragmented, siloed, and inefficient for content sellers and buyers.”
Mehta continued, “Content distribution is a very costly and lengthy process—attending trade fairs and film festivals, months of emails with disjointed players, paper contracts, and flying around the world to close deals and access new markets. It can take three to twelve months to close a deal. This creates high costs—with distributors charging up to 40 per cent commission—and deals are often non-transparent, exclusive, and non-accommodating to small production houses. Our online marketplace reduces costs of distribution by up to 70 per cent, while shortening the process for buyers to discover, negotiate, pay and receive content from months to a single day.”
For content creators, whether they are a big film studio or an independent producer, the AllRites Marketplace provides a platform to find authenticated buyers. For content buyers, the platform provides a global catalogue, allowing them to search for content, find instant content rights availabilities and make offers for content rights all online. The data-driven platform can be searched with various criteria such as genre, region, actors, and language. The platform is free to list content and for authenticated buyers to search. A small fee is charged on completed deals.
According to PwC, three of the top ten fastest growing territories for entertainment and media spending are from Asia, namely China, India and Indonesia. Between 2016-2021, the entertainment and media sector is projected to grow 7.2 per cent in Southeast Asia, reaching US$64.5 billion in 2021. Asian content continues to grow relative to other markets, with China set to surpass Hollywood and Bollywood to become the world’s largest film market by 2020.
Mehta added, “Having launched the first fully functional B2B marketplace for Asian broadcast content, we’re developing the technology to become a comprehensive ecosystem that incorporates monetising unsold rights and sharing revenue with content creators, and a crowdfunding platform for consumers and stakeholders to directly support and benefit from creative concepts they believe in.”
“Beyond the AllRites Marketplace, our vision is a powerful, efficient, scalable ecosystem that leverages technology to enable transparent trade among content producers and buyers, funding of creative ideas and direct streaming to end-customers. AllRites is looking into exciting opportunities such as blockchain that can solve longstanding industry issues such as the protection of rights and identity management, distribution of earnings, transparency and speed of transactions, and more efficient monetisation of content,” Mehta concluded.
AllRites is founded by Riaz Mehta, who brings over 13 years of experience in Asian media as the Founder and President of Imagine Group—a leading producer of large-scale reality TV shows across Asia. Prior to his pivot into the TV production and broadcast content arena, Riaz spent 17 years in technology where he headed up the Asian operations for KAZ Group—one of the largest publicly listed Australian tech firms, before it was sold to Telstra . AllRites’ Chief Content Officer, David Gunson, spent over 20 years in the TV industry and previously served as NBC Universal’s VP of Channels for Southeast Asia. AllRites is advised by a board comprised of experts in online marketplaces such as Airbnb and LinkedIn; blockchain and technology; and legal and compliance.
The global Media & Entertainment (M&E) market reached US$1.9 trillion in revenues in 2016. The global blockchain technology market is projected to grow to US$2.3 billion by 2021, with the M&E vertical expected to witness the highest CAGR.
