The 1% Club Reaches Central & Eastern Europe

BBC Studios has signed the first Central and Eastern European adaptations for Magnum Media’s The 1% Club, marking 12 total international deals for the hit format.

Hungary’s TV2 and Ukraine’s 1+1 will be airing local iterations of the game show, in which contestants answer increasingly challenging questions to see if they can outsmart 99 percent of the population, later this year.

The new adaptations come after BBC Studios announced that Greece’s Star Channel would air the tenth local version of the show. The format has also aired in the U.K., Spain, France, Germany and Australia, with Mexico, the U.S. and Turkey set to debut adaptations this year.

In the U.K., The 1% Club was the biggest game show on U.K. television in 2023, according to ITV, and the channel’s biggest original game show in a decade. Its play-along app averages 175,000 viewers with each episode, and there have been 1.8 million downloads to date.

“In fewer than two months since we announced Greece as the milestone tenth territory to commission the format, I’m delighted that the format is now coming to Central and Eastern Europe, with Hungary and Ukraine becoming the next countries to join The 1% Club,” said André Renaud, senior VP of global format sales at BBC Studios. “With a further two series of The 1% Club commissioned in the U.K. after stellar ratings, it’s clear that the format’s unique appeal extends to a global audience. I’m looking forward to seeing both TV2 in Hungary and 1+1 in Ukraine deliver their own turns at the entertainment show that’s not about what you know but how your brain works.”

Gabor Fischer, programming director of TV2 Media Group, added, “It is a great honor for us to work with BBC Studios on the Hungarian adaptation of another world hit after Dancing with the Stars. It’s an incredibly exciting format that I’m hoping will involve the whole of Hungary. There are shows on the international format market that we don’t need to hesitate about making in Hungary. The 1% Club is exactly like that. It was launched 2 years ago in the U.K. on ITV, and since then it has been a huge success everywhere it has been shown.”