Mip London launches this month, alongside the long‑established London TV Screenings. Is the TV industry at risk of conference overkill, or could the new entrant solidify London’s place as the heart of the global industry?
If there is one winner to emerge in the frenzied battle for global TV events, it is the UK capital. In the span of three months, London will have hosted a trifecta of major markets and conferences: Content London in December, the distributor-led London TV Screenings in late February, and the inaugural RX-organised Mip London, which will run alongside the Screenings from February 23-27.
That such events can draw buyers and sellers during the winter months has been a success story for the UK industry — particularly during a down period for the TV business overall — but in some corners, there are fears the freshly relocated Mip offering will dilute the established, thriving Screenings.
For years, there was speculation around the future of MipTV, the April TV market in Cannes, where attendance figures had been dwindling for the better part of a decade. (The 2019 market attracted 9,500 attendees, while just 3,500 registered for the final MipTV in 2024.) One not-insignificant impetus for MipTV’s decline was the growth of February’s London TV Screenings — a week-long co-ordinated schedule of screenings organised by distributors taking advantage of buyers attending the BBC Studios Showcase.
“People were making a choice between, ‘Do we go to London earlier in the year, or do we come to Cannes?’ It was becoming more and more difficult, and TV was not coming out the winner,” RX director of entertainment Lucy Smith tells Screen International. “What we were getting from the feedback and our conversations with clients was that the distribution market had moved forward in the time of year.”
Indeed, London had called, and the global TV industry was answering. Global buyers would flock to the BBC’s days-long Showcase in Brighton and, later, Liverpool, before taking the train to the capital and meeting with other distributors. Over time, the BBC’s distribution rivals, such as ITV Studios, Banijay Rights and All3Media International, began hosting their own laidback showcase events, which loosely became known as the London TV Screenings.
The event was formalised in 2021 and has now expanded to include 36 distributors, all of which work together to ensure minimal overlap between their events. The rise of Screenings had an impact on MipTV because distributors (and, to some extent, buyers) stopped prioritising the Cannes market, particularly as it meant saving on the exorbitant travel and exhibition costs associated with the RX event. With Screenings, there is no third party collecting fees: distributors pay (sometimes eye-watering prices) for their own events, which are held around Soho at venues such as Bafta and Odeon Leicester Square.
Stronger together?
In March 2024 came a bombshell: MipTV was closing shop in Cannes and moving to London — during Screenings. The news was controversial, with distributors, in particular, upset at the prospect of a competitor infringing on an event they had grown organically. Over the past 11 months, RX’s primary objective seems to have been assuaging fears about its new event, and underlining that Mip London was conceived as a complementary event to Screenings — not an opponent.
“We wanted to do something new and different,” says Smith, adding that the event is “definitely not MipTV”, with its exhibition hall, stands and emphasis on buying and selling. “London TV Screenings has done a wonderful job of putting together all of these different showcases, but there are also quite a lot of buyers saying, ‘Well, for us, it would be more useful if we could have some kind of central hub. It’s more efficient.’”
The Paris-based UK executive hopes the Savoy Hotel on the Strand and nearby IET London conference centre will serve exactly that purpose for Screenings, allowing more room for meetings, and letting buyers take a break from their hectic screening schedules.
Mip London will also serve up a content programme, featuring a keynote conversation between Netflix chief content officer Bela Bajaria and David Beckham (whose titular documentary series was a hit for the streamer), as well as a streaming strategies summit hosted by self-proclaimed media cartographer Evan Shapiro, a kids’ programming summit and the perennial Mip Formats and Mip Docs strands.
Going global
One of its primary strengths, however, is catering to an underserved international audience. Although the London TV Screenings has expanded in recent years to include more international companies, such as Israel’s Keshet and France’s Studiocanal, the event’s heavy-hitters are still primarily the London-headquartered distributors.
In many ways, Mip London will help to cast a wider net, and create a more inclusive space. Countries including Canada and China will have strong showings, and Smith says there will be a healthy contingent of formats-focused exhibitors from Japan and South Korea. Megumi Shirokawa, co-director of international business for Japan’s TV Asahi, tells Screen the company was attracted to the prospect of “a broader and more diverse array of participants from the global industry”.
With co-productions on the rise, executives like Shirokawa are finding value in markets where they can meet like-minded outlets from all around the world, rather than just within their own region. While some in the industry have previously said that one global confab in October’s Mipcom is more than enough, Shirokawa argues that “having the two international markets enables us to connect with a broader spectrum of buyers and fellow producers”, and also gain “invaluable insights into emerging global trends”.
Melissa Wohl, EVP of global distribution partnerships and sales for studio and FAST streamer FilmRise, adds that “Networking is still key to sales and acquisitions”.
“Having two markets at opposite ends of the year is helpful as it sort of bookends the calendar year,” explains the Los Angeles-based Wohl. “As we work with clients throughout the seasons, we use these markets to both begin and finalise deals.”
Even London TV Screenings stalwarts, such as Paul Heaney, founder of Night Train Media-backed distributor BossaNova, agree that Mip London will “inevitably attract buyers from countries that may not have been to London before at this time of year”.
The resistance from distributors, explains Heaney, is because the path to Screenings has been a “very collaborative journey of 12 to 15 years”. But even so, he points out the founding London companies also have to “avoid being overprotective of what we’ve all carefully built up”.
“If there are more people, there will be more business,” says Heaney. “My colleagues are noticing there is more time going in diaries outside of the big screening events, and a lot of buyers are coming to town at the end of the week before [Screenings and Mip London], and leaving during the middle of the week after. So they’re effectively here for two weeks in London.”
Growing pains
One constraint to Mip London’s success, he predicts, could be its location. “I don’t think The Savoy or the Strand are going to be anyone’s walk-by location,” says the executive, pointing out that most events are at least 20 minutes away in Soho.
Certainly there may be growing pains in year one, says Smith, but the executive promises the new RX event has not been envisioned as a one-off and will return for further editions in the future. If the industry’s newfound enthusiasm for collaborations says anything, notes Smith, it is that there is value to a global market with 100-plus countries in one place.
“That’s something that is irreplaceable for everyone, because we can no longer just look to the US or Europe,” she says. “We need to be looking much further afield and learning from other countries as well. I think that’s where we have a good role to play.”
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