Inaugural DISCOP Africa Exceeds Estimations

The inaugural edition of DISCOP AFRICA, which took place last week in Dakar, Senegal, has already established itself as a key event in the television industry calendar, with the number of participants attending substantially exceeding early estimations, Patrick Jucaud, General Manager, DISCOP and Rick Feldman, President and CEO, NATPE, DISCOP's joint partner.
A total of 457 participants attended the 3-day DISCOP AFRICA market, the first international event dedicated to the development of the television content business in Africa.
Attendees represented 332 companies including 159 TV Stations and 9 Pay-TV platforms from 39 African countries; as well as 109 film and television content distributors, 34 of which are from Africa.
Fifty-five media-buying and creative agencies representing African television advertisers, including Coca Cola, Saatchi & Saatchi and Universal McCann, were also in attendance, ready to make investments in television advertising in the run-up to the FIFA 2010 World Cup which will take place in South-Africa.
The conference program, attended by more than 250 delegates, featured 10 separate sessions hosted by 47 expert speakers, including executives from SABC, M-Net and FIFA.
Patrick Jucaud, General Manager at DISCOP, commented: "We are extremely pleased with the first edition of DISCOP Africa - the mood at the market was very positive - and we are already making preparations for the next event in Kenya later this year. One of our key aims at DISCOP is to identify new business opportunities in emerging markets for content distributors, which is vital now more than ever, in a context where the content business in both the developed and the more mature markets is under great pressure."
He continued: "A number of factors have led Africa to become one of the world's most dynamic marketplaces right now, including the upcoming FIFA World Cup; an increasing number of emerging digital platforms offering high quality TV to a wider African audience; positive growth in the advertising market and an increasingly active local production community.
"There is also a growing interest amongst international distributors in offering affordable license fees to developing markets as they become increasingly important on the global stage. This proved to be the perfect time to offers an event focusing on the region and at the close of the market a vast majority of buyers and sellers had confirmed that they had already signed lucrative deals at the event."
The next DISCOP AFRICA will take place in Nairobi, Kenya from September 16 to 18, 2009.
After 15 years of operating independently, the DISCOP events have partnered since 2005 with the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE). NATPE is a global non-profit organisation dedicated to the creation, development and distribution of televised programming in all forms, across all mature and emerging media platforms.
(KMcA/BMcC)