EXCLUSIVE: Last year’s strikes may have finally convinced the big players to reorganize streaming residuals, but the debates around compensation are far from over or specific to the United States

With their new consultancy business, British TV veterans Adrian Wills And Simon Brown are on a mission to help producers, talent and agents get a fairer share of the pie from streamers.

Working closely with analytics firm Digital-i, the pair, who have decades of experience between them working for the likes of BBC Studios and UKTV, developed a formula for broadly determining the value of certain shows. for a streaming service in terms. of monetary value – potential gold dust for content creators in the dark.

While streamers, in particular Netflixhave become more transparent through data visualization in recent times, Wills and Brown are now taking the data and putting it to use.

“We’re kind of 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 margins for a streamer are now enormous. If I were a content producer generating this level of revenue, I could expect to get a slightly larger share.

Wills and Brown’s “Content Rating Service” works by taking rating data from 20,000 streamer subscribers provided by Digital-i, then rating a show based on its contribution to total subscription revenue and to the streamer’s total content spend. When negotiating the price of a future season or acquiring a show, producers, talent or agents can then take the topic to the table and provide streamers with what Brown calls a “cap assessment and pass,” which is actually two numbers that act as a floor and ceiling for the potential value of a project.

“We understand that Netflix can make ‘X amount’ from your show, but they have to run a business so you don’t get your entire cut,” Brown said. “But we give a producer a range: you go in with an aspiration about subscriber value and you have a ‘we must not fall below this’ number in your back pocket.

Ironically, streamers would have a hard time denying the validity of the data, as many subscribe to Digital-i in order to “look over the fence at their competitors,” according to Brown. Digital-i data maps Netflix, Main videoDisney and Max.while an extension to Apple TV+ is planned for next year.

Wills and Brown have spent the past few months pitching proposals to independent law firms, talent, media and agencies, including CAA, Avalon, All3Media and Banijay. For CAA, they recently completed an estimate of the value of The Bridgerton Chronicles And Queen Charlotte, while they were using the BBC Peaky Blinders, which has been licensed to Netflix for years, to prove its worth to producer-distributor Banijay. “We asked if it would be helpful to know how much the streamer made from their show and the answer was ‘yes,'” Brown said.

Notably, Wills and Brown are also advising a firm on the assessment of the European Union’s statutory rights remuneration for 2022, which aims to ensure that creators of intellectual property receive fair compensation for their works and is currently being challenged by the streamers in court.

Subscriptions, engagement, retention

The duo’s formula examines 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 representing 80% of global subscribers, providing customers with a global perspective. “The market is relatively saturated in the US and UK, so a high-performing show here may not drive subscriber growth but rather solidify viewership,” Wills said. “But it could work well elsewhere, for example in Japan or Latin America, where penetration is lower. What struck me first was the diversity of ways we can create value around this. »

Given how residual demands from streamers dominated During negotiations over last year’s double strike in the United States, both men felt it was a good time to try to help the industry win its fair share. “There is a tradition of ‘cost plus’ in this industry of taking, say, £1.2 million ($1.6 million) per hour if your show is worth £1 million, but we discount that into question and let’s say: “Well, if a show generates £4 million, then is £1.2 million really the right level?” ” Brown said. “Without wanting to appear too altruistic, it is in everyone’s interest to support popular creativity. »

Moving forward, Wills and Brown will continue to publicize their work. They hope to improve the formula so that a figure can also be talked about that applies to new shows based on similar projects that have done well, although they acknowledge they’re not there yet.

“When you get predictive, a chink in the trading armor opens and we haven’t perfected it yet,” Brown added. “If it’s a returning series, you can look at older seasons and that makes it pretty black and white, but when you start thinking about new series, that’s where the streamer could question (the formula).”

As more bribes are used in what could eventually become a deadly scheme, the conversation around compensating streamers seems louder than ever.