The deal with the French firm will see Art Format Lab take on the role of a distributor as well as producer of regional events.
Dubai production house Art Format Lab (AFL) has partnered with BIGG, a French media group specialising in video gaming and esports entertainment. According to the deal, AFL will help secure distribution and content localisation rights for the French channel across the MENA, Turkey, Italy, South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. This includes AFL serving as the channel distributor, helping to produce local esports events across the MENA region and also enabling the localisation of international content for BIGG in the Arab world.
BIGG TV offers more than 1,500 hours of diversified content each year, including video gaming and esports content, live events covering popular games such as FIFA, CS: GO, DOTA 2, Starcraft, Hearthstone and Fortnite, as well as top past tournaments and universal franchises including Pokemon, Mario and premium documentaries. The channel aims to cover more than 150 major international championships and events. This will include live coverage of the 2023 Africa eSports Championship, the FIFA 23 eChampionships and the 2023 Champions Chess Tour.
Khulud Abu Homos, CEO of AFL also announced that this collaboration will see the two companies partner to produce season two of the popular Live the Challenge show, the production house’s original video gaming championship. Season two will take place in Cairo in October 2023 with participation from the top 16 e-sports teams from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Kuwait.
“We are very excited about this partnership with BIGG as the future of the video game industry looks set to grow in leaps and bounds. Consumer demand is growing, technology is advancing quickly, and new monetisation models are taking off with a global revenue that is expected to grow by more than 50% over the next five years,” commented Abu Homos.
“The MENA region is a fast-growing market with a high revenue stream that has reached $4.4bn in 2022,” added Jeff Padovani, BIGG’s CEO. “It’s also a high potential market with a young population that spends more time watching gaming than the average. We are delighted to join forces with Art Format Lab to bring esports to mainstream media and offer a whole new experience to the fans.”
