Pitch Engine

  • Written by Reporters

SINGAPORE - Media OutReach - 21 October 2016 - Aurora Media Holdings (AMH), one of Southeast Asia's leading media and entertainment asset incubation, investment and management vehicles has inked a development and financing agreement with BlinkAsia, a Singapore-based content development and multi-approach sponsorship agency led by Shamila Gopalan, triggering an exciting collaboration to produce and license out various strands of sports-reality formats for the regional and international marketplace with blue-chip production entities based within Asia, including Endemol Shine Asia.

 

"As part of our continued investment strategy, a key focus has been nurturing a commercial portfolio of intellectual properties for broadcast and OTT platforms with valued partners who can successfully cross the bridge from development into production and licensing. BlinkAsia's innovative insights into branded entertainment creates a complementary avenue for monetization together with our co-production expertise. Our targeted approach towards   attaching top-tier production partners across the region also ensures quality programming and top-notch values," said Justin Deimen, Group Managing Partner of AMH & Head, Investments of the recently announced USD30M global content fund, Aurora Media Capital. "This financing and development model offers us efficiency and mitigates our overall risk."

 

Gopalan from BlinkAsia commented, "Sports from a media content perspective offers the diversity of audiences that cuts across a multitude of platforms, allowing for diversified propositions and enables comprehensive integration that no other type of content can offer. Working together with Aurora allows us to expand our offerings and to amplify our distribution potential with meaningful partnerships and strategic ideation. Asia has seen the biggest evolution in sports over the last few years and we are aiming to create more Asian heroes to be adopted by Asian sports fans."

 

The first format out of the slate is Gladiators of Golf (8 X 45'), a regional reality competition pitting amateur contestants against each other in edgy golf challenges to kick-start their journey into becoming complete modern-day golf maestros. The series will be produced and distributed in 2017 by Endemol Shine Asia, the global production powerhouse behind Big Brother and MasterChef.

 

Managing Director of Endemol Shine Asia, Fotini Paraskakis, said "We're excited to partner with BlinkAsia and Aurora Media Holdings to bring Gladiators of Golf to screens across the region. As audiences grow within Asia and consumer demand becomes more varied, it gives us more opportunity to invest in exciting new formats. Endemol Shine Asia is constantly looking for new, refreshing and innovative ways to deliver content to audiences, with an ambition to focus on these growing sports-reality formats."

  

Next in line is Asia Fight Academy (13 X 30'), a unique format to discover Asia's most promising unsigned MMA fighter and reignite the underdog spirit in audiences around the world. The project is developed in conjunction with No Average Joe, a production company in Singapore and continues to have strong traction with leading broadcasters and brands in Malaysia and co-producers in the greater Southeast Asian region though Aurora Media's output deals.

 

The slate includes popular sports such as basketball, martial arts, soccer, cricket, and swimming and the producers will continue to acquire formats and seed-fund IPs from around Asia to develop and package them for syndication to broadcasters, media agencies, and other platforms internationally. The slate will include deep dives into audience data science and sports performance analytics through its partnerships with social media marketing firms and brands.