New financier taps Van Den Bussche for TV push

Transatlantic media investment group MCap has appointed former Zodiak Media and Endemol Peter Van Den Bussche to lead a push into programme financing.

This comes soon after London- and New York-based MCap raised US$500 million to launch into North America.

Van Den Bussche has worked in international TV for 20 years, notably as Zodiak’s head of business development and Endemol Entertainment’s international sales chief.

He also oversaw Omnicom UK’s programme finance partnerships with ITV and Sky.

He has already secured an agreement to fund a new series for “major broadcast outlet” with Tom Forman’s prodco, Critical Content, following a trip to LA last week.

“Whilst there is a lot of talk about TV living through a golden age right now – which is absolutely true – at the same time, everybody recognises that production budgets have risen to near untenable levels, that it’s becoming increasingly more difficult for traditional broadcast outlets, linear and/or digital, to compete with the cash rich SVOD platforms and tech players,” said Van Den Bussche in a statement.

“The traditional broadcaster’s woes are compounded even further by a year-on-year decline in advertising revenues. Advertising spend has shifted from TV to digital – a trend that is unlikely to be reversed. MCap’s programme finance model allows broadcasters and their production partners to invest in original content production without being burdened by debt.”

“We believe that there is great potential for our flexible, fair and collaborative programme finance model,” he added, noting priority markets were the UK, US, Canada and Australia.

Media investments firms such as MCap and WPP-owned Motion Content Group (fka GroupM Entertainment) have become increasingly prevalent in programme finance in recent years.

THE STORY IN QUOTES

MCap group CEO Leon Cutler: “We launched MCap in 2012 as a specialist investment group focused on the media and entertainment industry. The media industry was, and is, more than ever before, experiencing fast-paced disruptive change, we felt that there was an opportunity to deliver dynamic and flexible financing options to media owners and the production community in order for them to keep up with digital and general market transformations.

“Growing our content investment facility is a natural extension to the investment services in that we already deliver in outdoor (out of home), radio, ad tech, print and M&A area.

“We’re extremely pleased that Peter has joined our team. Peter has an exceptional track record in the international TV business and is one of the few media execs that has experience of working, at the highest level, in the production and distribution community as well as in media agencies.