Simon Brown and Adrian Wills launch a grading service

EXCLUSIVE: Last year’s labor strikes may have finally convinced the big players to upgrade streaming leftoversbut the debate around compensation is far from over, or only in the US

Through his fledgling consulting business, British broadcasters Adrian Wills and Simon Brown aim to help producers, talent and agents get a bigger slice of the streamer pie.

Working closely with analytics company Digital-i, the pair, who have decades of experience working at BBC Studios and UKTV, developed a formula to generally determine the value of certain shows for the streaming service. monetary value – potential gold dust for content producers in the dark.

Whereas stretch marks, especially Netflixhave become more transparent with recent data reviews, Wills and Brown now collect data and use it.

“We’re on a mission to help content producers get their fair share of SVoD revenue,” Brown said when Deadline caught up with the duo in Soho a few weeks ago. “The margin for a streamer is huge now. If I were a content producer generating that level of revenue, I could expect to get a slightly larger share.”

Wills and Brown’s “Content Rating Service” works by taking ratings data from 20,000 streamer subscribers provided by Digital-i and then rating a show based on its contribution to the streamer’s total subscription revenue and total content spend. When negotiating the price of an upcoming season or acquiring a show, producers, talent or agents can later bring this to the table and give streamers what Brown calls a “cap and collar estimate,” which is actually two numbers that act as a floor and a ceiling. how much the project might cost.

“We understand that Netflix might get ‘X amount’ from your show, but they have to run a business, so you’re not going to get your full share,” Brown said. “But we give the producer a range — you go in with a desire for subscriber value and you have a ‘we shouldn’t go below that’ number in your back pocket.

Ironically, it would be difficult for streamers to dispute the validity of the data, as many signed up to Digital-i to “look over the fence at their competitors,” according to Brown. Digital-i Netflix data cards, Prime VideoDisney and Maxwhile the extension to Apple TV+ planned for next year.

Wills and Brown have been pitching to independent, talent, media law firms and agencies in recent months, including CAA, Avalon, All3Media and Banijay. For CAA, they recently completed a cost estimate Bridgerton and Queen Charlotte, whereas they used the BBC Peaky Blinders, a license that Netflix has licensed for years to prove its worth to producer-distributor Banijay. “We asked if it would be useful to know how much a streamer makes from their show, and the answer was yes,” Brown said.

Notably, Wills and Brown are also advising the company on the assessment of the European Union’s 2022 statutory remuneration for rights, which aims to ensure that IP authors receive fair compensation for their work, and which streamers are currently challenging in the courts.

Replacements, attraction, retention

The pair’s formula looks at a show’s performance through a three-pronged lens: subscriber acquisition, engagement and retention. This is facilitated by Digital-i data covering the 20 largest markets, which account for 80% of global business entities, giving clients a world view. “The market is relatively saturated in the US and UK, so a high-performing show here may not drive subscriber growth, but rather strengthen audiences,” Wills said. “But it might be good elsewhere, say Japan or Latin America, where penetration is lower. So what struck me at first was how many different ways we could create value around that.”

Considering how residual requirements for streamers dominated Having negotiated a double strike by U.S. workers last year, the duo says now is a good time to try to help the industry get its fair share. “There’s a tradition in this industry of ‘cost plus’ taking, say, £1.2m ($1.6m) an hour if your show cost £1m, but we’re questioning that and saying: ” Well, if the show is making £4m, then is £1.2m really the right level?” Brown said. “I don’t want to sound too altruistic, but it’s in everyone’s best interest to support the creativity of ordinary people.”

Going forward, Wills and Brown will continue to spread the word about their work. They’re hoping to refine the formula so a figure can also be formulated to apply to new shows based on similar projects that have succeeded, though they admit they’re not quite there yet.

“When you become prescient, it opens a chink in the negotiating armor, so we haven’t perfected that,” Brown added. “If it’s a returning series, you can watch the old seasons and that makes it pretty black and white, but when you start thinking about new shows, then the streamer can question (the formula).”

As more is invested in what could eventually become a killer formula, the conversation surrounding streamer compensation is louder than ever.