Fredrik af Malmborg

World Screen Weekly, April 3, 2008

Managing Director

Sparks Network

When Sparks Network was established, some five years ago, its founders, Fredrik af Malmborg and Nicola Söderlund, had a vision of building global brands in television by gathering the joint resources of leading production companies in each territory in the world. The two had worked together in previous years before reconnecting unexpectedly on a flight. Söderlund mentioned the concept of a network of producers exchanging their properties, and af Malmborg says he “immediately thought it was a fantastic idea. We quit our jobs and started Sparks a half a year later.”

The pair began to enlist local production teams from key territories around the world to become members of the format-exchange network. “We saw this need in the market,” says af Malmborg. “As a producer, the best way to develop a TV program is probably to be that mid-sized production company, where you’re still not owned by a big corporate organization and you still have that independent spirit. That’s what we want to keep.”

Today, Sparks Network has 20 companies with strong format catalogues under their belts. The company has also taken on expanded responsibilities with developing formats and facilitating co-productions by members, as well as distributing third-party formats from companies outside the network.

Af Malmborg comments, “I think with all the new channels coming up everywhere, there’s an increasing demand to manage and develop co-productions that really feel like local productions, but are actually cleverly co-produced between two or more countries from the very start.” He adds, “Budgets are going down, and if you want to do high-end productions, you need to think of new ways.”

Budgets are not the only factor forcing companies to get more creative in their products. As the format market becomes more and more crowded, buyers are becoming increasingly selective in looking for the next big thing. A company must now come up with formats that accommodate a variety of tastes, and “we have a good power to do that,” says af Malmborg, adding that with all the members in its network, Sparks sees development of some 50 to 60 pilots per year.

Some new offerings for the market from Sparks Network are the poker-quiz game show Check or Bet from Imagic in the Middle East and Back in Wedding Shape from BlazHoffski in the Netherlands and Belgium.

—By Kristin Brzoznowski