One morning at the end of April, I woke up to the news that NATPE Global had been canceled. My first reaction was disbelief.
After decades as a fixture of our industry, how could America’s international content market simply disappear and leave such a void? Some described NATPE’s demise as inevitable, the consequence of a television industry undergoing profound change. I couldn’t accept that.
Market Fragmentation
The U.S. remains the world’s largest entertainment economy, but it has become remarkably fragmented. Broadcasters and streamers are only part of the picture. Producers, brands, advertisers, digital platforms, talent agencies, technology and AI companies, financiers and new monetization partners increasingly influence how intellectual property gets acquired, adapted, financed, produced and reaches audiences. At the same time, something important has happened: Americans are watching more foreign stories. Parrot Analytics estimates that U.S. demand for non-U.S. film and television increased from 17.1% in 2019 to 25.3% in 2025. Foreign storytelling is moving from the margins toward the mainstream. This creates a growing need for foreign IP owners to build real connections with the broadcasters, streamers, studios, producers, agencies, brands and technology companies that shape how content moves in the U.S.
Growing Demand
I believe foreign IP owners are trying to navigate that fragmentation in America today. As this article appears, we are in the middle of mapping and gauging the interest of 1,500 U.S. organizations in foreign finished content, scripted and unscripted adaptation rights, feature-film remake rights and projects in development seeking American partners. We want to understand who is interested in what before we start putting people in
rooms together.
A STAR Is Born
This combination—increasing fragmentation and growing demand—is what gave me the urge to create STAR: a new market coming to Los Angeles in 2028 to fill the void that we are experiencing at the very epicenter of the industry itself.
I have spent 35 years of my life building markets precisely where—and when—the business was changing fastest. In the early 1990s, when the internet and mobile phones were barely part of our lives, I launched DISCOP in Budapest to help international distributors and producers navigate the newly emerging television industries of Central and Eastern Europe, including the ex-Soviet Republics. We quickly understood that bringing people together wasn’t enough. We pioneered deep-dive market research and the advance organization of qualified meetings. We mapped broadcasters, identified decision-makers, researched their programming needs and helped international sellers meet the people who actually needed what they were selling. Those markets were extraordinarily difficult to understand. Reliable information was scarce. Entire television industries were being created almost overnight. Yet, by the time I sold DISCOP’s activities in this world region to NATPE in 2011, the territories we had helped open were generating approximately $4 billion annually for the international film and television content export industry. After organizing more than 90 DISCOP events, I eventually failed to keep my own company afloat. In 2021, I had to cancel a DISCOP market in Kigali, Rwanda at the last minute. That experience shaped my view of markets forever. I learned that markets have to start from research and now I also know why markets fail.
STAR will take place June 6–8, 2028, at the Hilton Los Angeles/Universal City, just five weeks before the Olympic Games return to LA.
A market only deserves to exist if it solves a problem. I believe this one does.
Read more: Cinema & Video International Issue #208
