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INTERVIEW: twofour54 COO on Arabic content
twofour54 COO Wayne Borg talks about trying to make Abu Dhabi a hub for content creation, promoting Arabic-language content and how to make money in this growing market.
>How big is the market for Arabic media content?
Today, it’s some 340m people; the equivalent of North America. The beauty is it’s a single-language marketplace and what’s even more compelling is you’ve got some 60% of the population under the age of 25, so a real sweet spot when it comes to leisure and entertainment consumption. In TV terms it’s worth a couple of billion dollars. In digital, it’s still in its infancy. Digital is hard to track and the monetisation issue is still a challenge in this part of the world, but there’re lots of opportunities here.
>Why does Abu Dhabi need a media centre?
If you look at all the successful cultural capitals around the world, what they’ve got in common is a very strong creative industry space. Today there really isn’t a creative hub within the Arabic world. Yes, content gets produced here but there isn’t really anywhere the creative community can come together in an environment that’s supportive and conducive to what they do.
This is about establishing a centre of excellence for Arabic content creation. The focus for us is about how you develop the skills. You provide enabling facilities and support creative entrepreneurship in a creative environment.
>Doesn’t Dubai have a similar centre?
What we’re doing is very different and unique not only to what’s happening in Dubai, but internationally. I don’t think anyone else is developing this model.
It’s about how you develop a talent pool. We have a training academy we’ve established here with a number of international partners, the BBC, Thomson Reuters, Apple. It’s about developing the conditions to help the creative talent develop. I think a lot of other named media cities, zones and parks really tend to be a real estate proposition, just offering space. In addition to training we have studio facilities. It’s providing all the infrastructure needed to help the industry ecosystem flourish in the years to come.
>Are there any other distinguishing features?
We’ve got today about 75 companies since we started 12 months ago, ranging from large international broadcasters to small one and two-man operations. Every company that establishes here is required to take on trainees and internships – they’re immersing themselves in the region and developing the talent pool. Our role is to help develop those companies’ businesses, not just provide space and leave them to fend for themselves, particularly international companies coming here for the first time.
It’s not just about film and TV. This covers the full industry spectrum from digital content, gaming, publishing, music. To complement Abu Dhabi’s development, we’re one of the strategic industry sectors that’s been identified with what’s called the 2030 plan, which says that by 2030, 50% of Abu Dhabi’s Emirate GDP is derived from non-energy based sources.
>How do you help content creators monetise their work?
We just launched AppsArabia to provide support for Arabic apps developers. Arabic is the fifth-largest spoken language in the world today and the number of Arabic apps here is virtually non-existent. The first thing is getting appropriate apps out there across all the various platforms: Apple, Nokia, BlackBerry. It’s predominantly ad-supported, but if you start looking at the apps area and online, the reason it hasn’t been particularly robust from a subscription standpoint is there hasn’t been the compelling content people want to subscribe to.
News Corp a couple of months ago announced expansion plans here at twofour54 – they’re bringing Fox channels, NatGeo production entity and also their online app services business here. Where it starts is producing great quality content and again the beauty of this marketplace is you’ve got an incredibly aggressive appetite for technology. The UAE alone has 200% mobile penetration, probably getting close to 100% across the region. The UAE is pretty much wired up, most of the Gulf states are. You’ve got a young audience with disposable income, but there isn’t really any content there that actually connects with them.
> Do you offer advice on what content is not appropriate for the Arabic world?
Culturally, every region differs. Each region has content that reflects the culture and social norms of that particular area. I think that’s where the opportunity here is. There’s no reason why this part of the world shouldn’t have a strong indigenous industry base, in much the same way you’ve seen in many parts of Europe.
Historically, the challenge has been there wasn’t the infrastructure here to support the industry. That’s what we’re going about addressing. We’ve got the studios in place now, we’ve got incubator opportunities for young Arabic startups and entrepreneurs to support them not only with funding but more importantly with industry expertise, mentoring and operational guidance.
>What about censorship issues?
The goal for every sort of content producer is the same, they want to connect with an audience. The last thing they’re going to do is alienate audiences. Quite often the content that’s been a challenge has been content that’s produced for other parts of the world. Very little content gets produced from the region because of the lack of that talent pool. If we start to develop that talent pool, who understand that region, who come from that region, I don’t think there’re any issues at all.
>Is piracy a problem in this region?
That has historically been a challenge. From a regional content perspective it’s probably relatively low because there’s very little content made today [but] that remains a challenge as it is around the rest of the world.
