With film festivals, grants, new initiatives and rebate programmes, Saudi Arabia is attracting regional and international entities to its shores.
As we get ready to travel to Amsterdam for IBC, big changes are unfolding on the GCC landscape with Saudi Arabia playing a central role in these transformations. While there have been spurts of activity in other Arab countries as well, it’s the developments in KSA that merit attention. It all began when the Saudi Crown Prince announced the country’s 2030 vision. Since then, there has been a sudden surge of activity from different quarters.
At the governmental level, funding has been directed towards film festivals, film commissions, writing labs and the establishment of media entities like Neom and AlUla. Additionally, we have seen a raft of support in terms of grants, training and on-the-ground productions that have collectively set in motion a content market from virtually nothing to a bustling film scene. This landscape is still growing, expanding and evolving rapidly, and for an aspiring filmmaker or those in the media business, KSA is the current land of opportunity.
Many Saudi-owned companies who have long had their base in the UAE or other Arab countries, in the meantime, have also been instructed to head home and preparations for this move have been ongoing. Organisations have tried to incentivise their staff with a 20-30% hike in salaries to get them going, but many who have settled in the UAE, for instance, are reluctant to pack their bags.
This month, we hear Al Hadath, MBC Group’s news channel, will see half its employees make the exodus to Saudi Arabia with mid-November being the deadline to have at least 12 hours of news broadcast from Riyadh. In other companies, staff are shuttling between their old base and the new to ensure things run seamlessly on the work and home front
While there is no saying if the funding tap will suddenly run dry, all these opportunities in KSA have seen the proverbial gold rush from international and regional businesses. New ventures, TV channels, sports leagues and a variety of related media businesses have sprung up in recent times in KSA. Nearly all are investing in new studios or technologies to up their game and there’s no legacy equipment to hold them back. Some of them will be at IBC to explore emerging technologies and solidify their investment plans. We will be there too. See you at the show.
