Spain is set to request additional European recovery funds to help build up its film and television business into a long-term sustainable industry that’s attractive to global content producers, María González Veracruz, the country’s telecommunications secretary, said.
(Bloomberg) — Spain is set to request additional European recovery funds to help build up its film and television business into a long-term sustainable industry that’s attractive to global content producers, María González Veracruz, the country’s telecommunications secretary, said.
“We are negotiating with the European Commission right now” for additional funds, González Veracruz said in an interview in Madrid on Tuesday. “We are closing the negotiation on the quantity — we started with €425 million ($469 million) but, based on our latest calculations, it will probably be double that.”
A decision on the exact amount to be requested could be ready as soon as Thursday, she said.
Spain is betting on using EU funds to build a leading European audiovisual industry capable of winning over foreign content producers, such as Netflix, HBO and Disney, to make films and television shows in the country. Aside from investing cash directly, the government has also created tax incentives and special visas for industry workers to come and work in Spain.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez himself led a delegation to California in 2021 to present his plans to industry executives.
The government has already earmarked €1.6 billion for the so-called Audiovisual Hub, which include €200 million in grants from the EU recovery funds, all of which should be used by the end of 2025. It has already deployed about €1.2 billion.
With the new money, which would be provided as loans from the EU recovery fund, the government aims to extend the project’s duration until to 2027. The bigger challenge is to establish an industry that’s viable once the EU recovery funding runs out, González Veracruz said.
In 2021, Spain rated as the third-largest European producer of fiction films and the largest for documentaries, according to the European Audiovisual Observatory’s latest annual report. In 2019, Netflix launched its first European hub in Madrid and has doubled its size since then.
The government is pushing ahead with its plans in spite of a global cutback in spending by most major streaming platforms this year.
Increases in spending to produce content is expected to slow globally, with an increase of 2% this year, compared to 6% in 2022, according to London-based research firm Ampere Analysis.
Last year Netflix said it expected content spend to plateau at $17 billion in the coming years.
“That is not happening here yet,” Gonzalez Veracruz said, adding that the government also works closely with local producers, such as Telefonica SA and Atresmedia SA.
(Updates with timing in third paragraph.)
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