LILLE & PARIS, FRANCE – April 08, 2020 – Ms. Laurence Herszberg, founder and general director, announced that the Series Mania Digital Forum, the online platform which ran from March 25 to April 7, achieved great success with its viewership. Developed in record time by the festival team, the Series Mania Digital Forum was one of the first digital platforms dedicated to industry professionals that was created in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Members of the industry were able to find online the key content that makes the Series Mania Forum a success every year, including Co-Pro Pitching Sessions, UGC Writers Campus, Drama Series Co-writing Residency Israel-France, “Coming Next From” sessions and more than 50 international series from the festival program or from the Buyer's Showcase. Below are the detailed numbers:
SERIES MANIA DIGITAL FORUM in numbers:
● 1,500 users (out of the 2,000 industry professionals registered at the time of cancellation).
● 60% of users were buyers, commissioners, producers, distributors and sellers.
● 40% of users were screenwriters, programmers, and journalists.
● 40 countries were represented. France held the top position with one-third of the users, followed by the United States in 2nd position. Other countries with a high number of users included Germany, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Russia and Canada, highlighting the international dimension to Series Mania.
● 83 days of viewing (cumulative total).
● On average, users viewed 1.5 hours of content.
● 10,000 visits for the Buyers Showcase (approx. 7 episodes watched per user).
● 5,000 visits for projects in development (approx. 3.5 episodes watched per user).
“We are very proud of the great success of our first Series Mania Digital Forum. This global crisis prompted us to adapt our digital strategy urgently and the result was very positive. With 1,500 registered users, we were pleased to be able to create this virtual meeting place for our dedicated industry professionals. However, we know that this digital platform cannot exist alone, and nothing can replace the energy of the event in Lille which provides a unique meeting space where many face-to-face business exchanges and deals happen. In 2021, we will be sure to combine the two forms, digital and physical, to create an even bigger and better event in the years to come."
ABOUT SERIES MANIA
Created by Laurence Herszberg in 2010 in collaboration with artistic director Frederic Lavigne while both were at the Forum des images, the Series Mania Festival brings the best international series to the big screen and offers audiences (over 72,000 spectators in 2019) the rare opportunity to meet and learn from renowned showrunners, directors and television talent. Series Mania has developed into a unique event with wide recognition that is entirely dedicated to series, aimed at both the general public and industry professionals.
ABOUT SERIES MANIA FORUM
Launched in 2013, Series Mania Forum, the industry arm of the Series Mania Festival, has become the place to be for all those involved in the creation of series from around the world. In just a few years, Series Mania Forum has already seen many projects come to fruition, including Eden, Stella Blomkvist, Keeping Faith and Tabula Rasa, with many others currently in production. In 2019, the Forum held its second edition of Lille Transatlantic Dialogues, a one-day summit bringing together high-level political, corporate, creative and economic players from the TV and culture sectors in Europe and North America. The Forum is now the place where industry talent and decision-makers meet to create the new generation of serial fiction.
ABOUT LILLE DIALOGUES
Part of Series Mania Forum, the Lille Dialogues is a one-day summit joining together major political decision makers and leading industry executives for a day of reflection, announcements, and debates on the future of audiovisual creativity. The Lille Dialogues is a joint initiative between Series Mania, the French Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC), the Europe Creative - MEDIA program of the European Union with the collaboration of the Hauts-de-France Region. Past participants have included Reed Hastings (Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO, Netflix), Ted Sarandos (Chief Content Officer, Netflix)), Sophie Turner Laing (CEO, Endemol Shine Group), Delphine Ernotte Cunci (CEO, France Télévisions), Gilles Pélisson (CEO, TF1 Group), Georgia Brown (Head of European Originals, Amazon), and Franck Riester, France’s Minister of Culture.
