M+E Europe

At the recent at Smart Content Summit EU event EU event, Éclair’s Manel Carreras, chief commercial officer, and Angel Martin, managing director of versioning and accessibility, noted a major disparity in the localisation vendor sector: roughly 30% of the entire business is concentrated among just five companies.

The other 70% of services needed by the media and entertainment industry are divvied out among more than 200 other firms worldwide, and those firms are often forgotten in the grand scheme of things, especially when it comes to industrywide collaboration.

Their presentation — “Localisation Vendors Challenges And Opportunities – A Deep Look into Small-Mid Sized Studios Companies” — estimates the media localisation business at $2.5 billion in 2019, growing roughly 6.2% year over year, with European vendors accounting for a major portion of that revenue.

However, Éclair identified several problems smaller vendors face that their larger counterparts do not: limited or no international presence, with global customers tending to want to work with global companies; more difficulty adapting to new workflows; price pressure from local customers operating with limited budgets, who are ready to sacrifice service or quality; security challenges; too much dependence on local customers; and low visibility of market trends.

But Éclair noted they have strengths as well: well-positioned locally, very good local market knowledge, excellent service histories, direct local customer relationships, local legal expertise around rights, taxes, and more, more agility to make decisions quickly, and reduced overhead costs.

And the company identified several opportunities localisation providers have, including seeking out external partners to help with faster implementation, employ existing MAM solutions, and more.

To watch the Eclair presentation, click here. To download the presentation slide deck, click here.

Smart Content Summit EU was produced by MESA and MESA Europe, in association with CDSA, HITS and the Smart Content Council, which meets regularly to share best practices, evaluate emerging technologies and collaborate to accelerate the pace of transformation in our industry. The summit is sponsored by ATMECS, Cognizant, Deluxe, Digital Nirvana, Éclair, Eluvio, EIDR, Iyuno Media Group, TransPerfect, NAGRA, Premiere Digital, Zixi, Whip Media Group, AppTek and EIDR.