Money Matters

This article originally appeared in the NATPE Europe 2014 issue of TV Europe.

Drama producers and distributors are tapping into tax breaks and other production incentives across Europe.   

The globalization of television production has been a steadily growing phenomenon. The genie is out of the bottle. Hollywood is no longer a place so much as a state of mind. How wide open are the geographical possibilities? As wide as the whole world, if you take the example of Starz’s historical pirate series Black Sails. Shooting is almost finished on the second season of the program in Cape Town, South Africa. But it might have gone just about anywhere.

Starz actually did budgets for other options, including Spain, Malta, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Hawaii, and looked at Australia and New Zealand. The show is produced by Platinum Dunes, Quaker Moving Pictures and Film Afrika.

“Each possibility had a scorecard,” says Carmi Zlotnik, the managing director of Starz. “So, for example, Malta had tax benefits and a water tank, but no beaches. South Africa had benefits and beaches, but no water tank, but they built a water tank for us at Cape Town Film Studios.”

No matter where producers look nowadays, they are increasingly likely to find some form of financial inducement on offer.

“One of the main factors underlying the internationalization of production is the internationalization of production financing,” Zlotnik says. “Very few networks can do it all by themselves. Most of us put together money by selling off international rights, and that brings in all the dimensions of working with international partners, including the tax benefits and incentives. This has been true of feature films for a long time and it is increasingly true of television, and I don’t see it changing.”

Competition for attracting production has been intensifying. One clear trend is that more countries are offering tax incentives and benefits for television drama productions, expanding on incentives for feature films. For a location, TV series are probably more valuable than feature films, which might only stay in a place for a month. Series can bring benefits that last (think of Breaking Bad’s impact in New Mexico).

IMPORTANT INCENTIVES
Another current trend, perhaps less obvious, is that incentives are becoming more significant in the process of deciding where to shoot.

“Benefits and incentives are tremendously important for producers,” says Arie Bohrer, the president of the European Film Commission Network, an association of national and regional film commissions representing members from 27 countries, and the head of Location Austria, his country’s national commission.“They are absolutely essential for a country to attract productions, and television productions are becoming more and more important. There are two factors to look at: the location and the incentives. These are almost equal, except in the case of productions like a [James] Bond film, which have independent financing. I would say that there is a trend toward the incentives becoming more important. Another trend is for countries to expand their film provisions into television. Britain and Ireland typify this direction.”

Austria currently has tax-incentive schemes in place for TV co-productions as well as film co-productions covering up to 25 percent of local spending, with a maximum of €1.2 million per project. The total allocation is €1.5 million, which practically translates into two good-sized productions per year. Efforts are in progress to expand the scheme, currently available to service companies for feature films, to include TV productions.

Big international TV productions brought to Austria include The Pillars of the Earth, produced by Tandem Communications and Muse Entertainment, and World Without End, produced by Tandem with Scott Free Productions, Take 5 Productions and Galafilm.

Bohrer, a former line producer himself, says, “The reality is that you either eliminate incentives everywhere and nobody offers them or you have to play the game and offer them. Money is not easy to come by and the demand from producers for cheap money is growing.”

DECISION-MAKERS
“The point of entry of our production decisions starts with the specific needs and demands from the story,” says Rola Bauer, the president of Tandem Communications. “We look at what we need in terms of look, feel, architecture and topography. We analyze how much we need to build on sound stages versus practical locations. Then we compare different countries and cities in terms of what they can offer with respect to our needs, creating a short list. From there, we look at the economic benefits of each of those possibilities on the short list and that’s when tax and production incentives start playing a role in making a final decision on where we’ll shoot or where we’ll post.

“Once we have evaluated our production needs,” continues Bauer, “that’s when support incentives play a role in making a final decision, because who is going to say no to an economic incentive in a country or city where it makes sense to shoot the show?”

After shooting two seasons of the detective series Crossing Lines in the Czech Republic, Tandem and Bernero Productions will be making the third season there this year. The show, with a budget of $3 million (€2.2 million) per episode, is co-produced with TF1 Production and Sony Pictures Television Networks in collaboration with Stillking Films.

Incentives can work fast. After introducing a 20-percent cash rebate scheme in 2012, Croatia attracted HBO’s epic series Game of Thrones for outdoor shooting of several scenes. The amount of production in Croatia, which boasts a wide range of locations, was up threefold in 2013. Part of the third season of Borgia was shot there this year.

“Every country is joining what has been called ‘the incentives race’ and is trying to profile itself as a production hub playing on its comparative advantages,” says Ana Delic, the filming in Croatia program coordinator at the Croatian Audiovisual Centre. “Although the amount that can be obtained through incentives plays a significant role when producers are deciding where to shoot, other factors come into play, such as locations, weather, crews and facilities, as well as the transparency and stability of the incentives scheme. There is also a question of loyalty and word of mouth.”

BY THE POUND
The U.K.’s ambitious tax-relief scheme for scripted television projects came into effect in 2013. It covers projects with a minimum core expenditure of £1 million (€1.2 million) per broadcast hour, with a rebate of up to 25 percent of qualifying expenditure. Unlike in many other places, there is no cap on the amount that can be claimed. A minimum of 25 percent of costs must be spent on U.K. qualifying production expenditure.

The tax relief is available for “culturally high-end TV programs.” The British government has said the new regime is expected to have a “significant impact” on businesses producing such shows, with about 50 high-end television production companies in the country that may benefit from the relief.

The government has estimated that the amount of support could reach £70 million (€86 million) by 2017–18. That figure is the amount of tax revenue that would not be coming to the Exchequer. For 2013–14, the estimate was £5 million (€6.1 million), forecast to climb to £25 million (€30.7 million) this year, £45 million (€55.3 million) next year and £60 million (€73.7 million) in 2016–17, if the program works as effectively as hoped.

“The incentives are an excellent idea,” says Jonathan Berger, a partner specializing in production finance at law firm Harbottle & Lewis. “They apply to both indigenous and inward production. They will not mean more domestic production in terms of volume, but they will mean bigger productions and higher production values. There is enormous interest from Hollywood in the U.K. TV incentives. Everybody thinks we have great incentives.”

“We were seeing an increasing volume of production leaving the U.K.,” says Oliver Lang, who steers the financial side of production as controller of content investment at BBC Worldwide. “In order to produce high-end drama and get scale, they were going to Eastern Europe and the Czech Republic, for example. Now, with the tax incentives, the U.K. is very competitive. We are seeing people staying. We are also seeing people coming with productions like Da Vinci’s Demons.

BBC Worldwide Productions has produced the show in Wales for Starz in the U.S. and FOX International Channels with Phantom Four Films and Adjacent Productions.

“Any producer looking at high-end drama is going to be looking at tax incentives,” Lang says. “So, many places are offering them. The tax incentives put the U.K. on an even keel with other territories. Given other factors, such as the depth of the skills available and the disproportionate strength of our independent production sector, the U.K. is now in an advantageous position.”

“The U.K. tax incentives for television have certainly made us more attractive as a partner,” says Susan Waddell, the CEO of Power, which co-produced the series New Worlds with all3media subsidiary Company Pictures in association with the U.K.’s Channel 4. The show was shot in the U.K. and Romania. “The number of people getting in touch with us about potential projects has increased noticeably over the last year or so. Everyone is looking at how to structure productions and co-productions to maximize incentives. The new tax incentives in the U.K. are the first and last consideration in what we do, though of course the evaluation of any project needs to tick the right creative boxes.”

The U.K. initiative underlines the point that incentives have become indispensable for attracting international TV drama productions.There is perhaps no better illustration of the new reality than the experience of the Czech Republic.

“You need to be able to offer tax breaks or cash rebates or some form of incentive because incentives are now being offered in so many places that if you don’t have them, you can’t compete,” says Ludmila Claussova, the film commissioner at the Czech Film Commission. “In 2003–04, we realized that we needed to bring in incentives. It took five years of hard work to convince the government to do so. We have great infrastructure, great crews and sets and costumes, and great locations close to Prague, but without incentives, it didn’t matter. It’s psychological. We would say, Let’s budget it, we might still be cheaper even without incentives, but [producers] didn’t even want to look.”

MIGRATION PATTERNS
Claussova continues, “We were losing productions to Budapest, London and Berlin, as well as the U.S. and Canada in the sense that we were not attracting North American projects. About 40 [U.S.] states now have incentives. Many Americans looked at Europe and decided to stay home. Our incentives have put us back on the map.”

The Czech incentives were introduced in June 2010 for film and television projects. The impact was not big at first, but business has been increasing and has grown four- or five-times higher since 2010.

The Czech Film Industry Support Programme offers a 20-percent rebate on qualifying Czech spend and 10 percent on qualifying international spend. Eligible spending may not exceed 80 percent of a project’s total budget. The rebate is available to features with a run time of at least 70 minutes and to TV episodes with a run time of at least 40 minutes per episode. The program had CZK 500 million (€18.2 million) in incentives on offer in 2013.

The Czech Republic had an unusually good year in 2013. Producers from the U.S., the U.K., Denmark, Norway, South Korea, France and Germany filmed projects there. Most of these were historical TV series.

CZECHS AND BALANCES
The production of BBC Worldwide’s series The Musketeers spent €8.5 million, more than half its total budget, in the Czech Republic with local partner Czech Anglo Productions. BBC is now back to shoot the second season.

The third and final season of Borgia was also shot on the Barrandov Studios backlot and in several locations around the country. The series is a co-production between Atlantique Productions, ETIC Films, Beta Film and Film United.

After shooting two seasons in the Czech Republic, the third season of Tandem’s detective series Crossing Lines will be shot there this year. 

Last year, Sirena Film was the local service partner for the Norwegian series The Heavy Water War, produced by Filmkameratene with NRK. With a bit of poetic justice after the loss of productions over previous years, Czech locations doubled for London as well as German and Norwegian settings.

To assess the real importance of benefits, it’s necessary to look at the scale of the impact. ZDF Enterprises, for example, invests about €40 million per year in international co-productions, especially with Australia and Scandinavia in the drama genre. “We are generally a co-production partner rather than the executive producer or line producer, so we are affected by tax benefits and incentives indirectly rather than directly,” says Alexander Coridass, the president and CEO of ZDF Enterprises. “In some countries, these benefits can be very significant. The calculation of the budgets for these projects is transparent, so we know that the tax benefits and subsidies can be critical in closing the financing for projects. In Australia, for example, they are very helpful for live-action teen drama. They are also important in Scandinavia.”

ZDF Enterprises’ most recent big co-production, the second season of Bron/Broen, was co-financed by SVT, Film i Väst, DR, Film i Skåne and NRK, and produced by Filmlance of Sweden and Nimbus Film of Denmark. 

ZDF Enterprises is a distinct entity from the ZDF network, which is supported by viewer license fees and fully finances about 95 percent of its commissioned programming. The company has a small portfolio of its own production companies.

One of these, Network Movie Film, is producing the new series The Team (working title) for ZDF in association with DR, Nordisk Film, Lunanime and Lumière of Belgium, C-Films of Germany and Superfilm of Austria. The show has an overall budget of €9 million to €10 million, with about 90 percent of it covered by pre-sales and private investors. To cover the remainder, about €500,000 comes from the European Commission’s MEDIA Programme and €500,000 comes from German and Scandinavian funds. So that’s only about 10 percent. But in some countries, the proportion can be 30 percent or a bit higher.

BIGGER BUDGETS
“For ZDF, the importance of subsidies is likely to increase as the company moves into projects with even bigger budgets,” says Coridass. “Over the next couple of years, we are planning to distribute big historical drama series covering topics such as Alexander the Great, the Medici and Ellis Island. For these projects, we are interested in getting as much money as we can from the available sources. The decision of where the main shooting takes place may depend on what sort of local support is available. Our approach will depend on the specific projects and situations. We are not talking about a TV movie budgeted at €1.5 million, but series costing €2 million to €5 million per episode, with six to eight to ten episodes. As your projects get bigger, every bit counts. If you are doing a TV movie and you need 5 percent to close your €1.5-million budget, you will find a solution. But if it’s 5 percent of €10 million or €20 million or €30 million, the challenge is greater. So potential sources of incentives are very relevant.”

Coridass says that he does not see an El Dorado of benefits and subsidies available in the market, even if countries may be offering more. “At the same time, competition is growing as more and more producers are looking to make drama series. So it’s a matter of more competitors going after pieces of the same pie.”

Tax benefits and other incentives are part of a matrix of factors in making decisions about production location, according to veteran producer Zlotnik at Starz. He also includes currency exchange rates, landscapes and settings, crew availability and technical proficiency, the acting pool, local infrastructure—which includes broadband connectivity as well as sound stages—post-production facilities and the travel distance. “We don’t have a specific points systems, but we make apples-for-apples comparisons,” Zlotnik says. “The budgets are the final representation of how they stack up, but some factors are hard to quantify.”

He adds, “Tax benefits and incentives are always important, but they do not monopolize the discussion. The landscape of tax benefits and incentives is also changing. If you look at America, sometimes states create new benefits and sometimes they abolish them, or if they have a fixed pool of finance, they run out of money. The trend is for locations to see the benefits of attracting production and then try to make themselves more competitive.”

The U.K. is now high on his list, with tax incentives that are “some of the best in the world,” Zlotnik says. On top of Da Vinci’s Demons, Starz has another U.K.-produced show, Outlander, set to debut in the U.S. in August. It was shot in Scotland, produced by Tall Ship Productions, Story Mining & Supply Co., Left Bank Pictures and Sony Pictures Television.

“It still feels like relatively early days for the U.K. tax credit,” says BBC Worldwide’s Lang. “One thing I have noticed is that additional money coming into production through the tax credit is going to increase the scale and ambition of productions, not drive up producers’ margins.”

ISSUES ARISE
Attracting television production from North America is not just a matter of offering incentives, acknowledges Berger of Harbottle & Lewis. “There are some issues for the U.K. to wrestle with. The first one that comes to mind is studio space. If you look at the traditional U.S. model of doing [22 to 24] episodes over five or six seasons, you need to know that you can commit to going someplace that can handle that. The U.K. studios are not really able to accommodate that yet. I don’t think it will be a long-term problem, and things are being done to remedy it.

“Another issue is the strong pound. The incentives are helping to offset the pound at $1.68. If the dollar moves to $1.40, the incentives will mean such a savings that Americans might even want to build studio space themselves. People like shooting here. We have good crews and it’s a good place to work. It’s all a question of cost.” 

And of course, it’s still about the actual locations. Two of Starz’s co-productions with the BBC were made in Belgium. One of them, The White Queen, about the English War of the Roses, needed the medieval locations of Bruges and elsewhere in Flanders, while the other, The Missing, now shooting in Wallonia and Brussels, has a fictional French setting. Belgium has excellent financial incentives, too.

“For us, attracting production is about the whole package,” says Jan Roekens, the head of production at Screen Flanders. “We have the Flanders Region, which offers the specific settings that the production requires. Screen Flanders provides support. We also have a Belgian federal-tax shelter and the possibility of a local broadcast partner, and sometimes the Flanders Audiovisual Fund can come in as well.”

MONEY TALKS
Screen Flanders can provide up to €400,000 in investment, while the tax shelter goes all the way up to €15 million, covering not more than half the budget of the production.

In the case of The White Queen, 17.5 percent of the total financing came from Belgium. For The Missing, the Belgian proportion is likely to reach 22 percent of the budget. For The Team, partly shot in Flanders, the Belgian share will reach about 25 percent.

“The incentive market is competitive,” Roekens says. “Every country is trying to do the same thing.”

Incentives are still only a piece of the jigsaw. “Of course incentives are important and can be the catalyst to move a project forward, but being creatively true to and maintaining the integrity of the story is essential,” says Tandem’s Bauer. “Based on this starting point, all other decisions of where to shoot and where to post are then made.”

However, for producers, the ubiquity of incentives is opening up new possibilities. In 2011, Power was acquired by the Sabido Group, part of the South African group Hosken Consolidated Investments, which owns the South African channel e.tv and is a joint-venture partner in Cape Town Film Studios. The South African connection adds another dimension to Waddell’s thinking about co-production and benefits.

“We are keen to find projects that can benefit from both U.K. and South African incentives, double-dipping, so to speak, in both pools of benefits,” she says.

Double-dipping might be the next trend.