Feasibility Study of a Digital Platform for the delivery of UK ... - BFI

UK FILM COUNCIL
Partner with a range of distribution players based on shared standards for delivery and a content commitment
A relatively light touch form of intervention would be to effectively ‘endorse’ a number of distribution platforms/partners for specialised
rights holders to deal with based upon some minimum set of criteria. These criteria could include some element of shared technical
standards and some minimum commitment to promote and distribute specialised and independent UK product – perhaps through some
kind of ‘quota’ akin to that used within the Digital Screen Network scheme.
The obvious potential criticism of this approach is that potential partners are likely to want some kind of quid pro quo for cooperating.
Commercial operators may also be wary about shared or ‘open’ standards, preferring to rely on proprietary solutions.
Indicative costs
The main costs associated with these types of partnership are staff and office overheads. A number of on-demand platforms will handle
ingest and mastering (from Digibeta) at no upfront cost. Costs are often taken out of the back-end. Thus the revenue share is done on a
percentage of net (after costs) rather than gross.
Set up a ‘white label’ B2B publishing platform supporting content which is “sold” on to distribution/marketing partners
At its simplest level, the UKFC could act as a match-maker between content owners and existing VoD platforms, perhaps also
encompassing some aspects of content aggregation discussed above in the rights section. VoD operators are eager to secure a wide
range of content for their services, but are obviously most interested in doing volume deals rather than piecemeal negotiations. Providing
specialised film content to VoD operators in an open non-discriminatory manner for inclusion within their on-demand libraries would be
one way in which the remit of digital delivery could be met. A prior aggregation step would be necessary to provide the volume of content
needed to make any such deal compelling. The plus points of this approach are that, assuming the platform owner could be convinced of
the value of the content on offer:
• The upfront costs would be minimal and the on-going financial commitment could be controlled and minimised.
• Deals could be struck with a wide spectrum of distribution partners in order to maximise access for consumers.
• The ‘white label’ strategy would minimise any perception of competing with existing services.
The potential downside to this approach is that the degree of control over what content was included in the distribution agreement with
the VoD operator would be minimal. Less commercial films, particularly those that had not received a UK theatrical release, would be
unlikely to be included in such agreements. As discussed above, an on-going marketing commitment across multiple platforms would
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