560 Media to oversee secondary rights for Banijay Rights

Banijay Rights has appointed 560 Media to oversee its secondary rights.

Under the deal, the UK-based global rights agency will manage secondary rights for the Banijay Group-owned distributor for five years, representing more than 20,000 hours of programming across all genres.

The deal was brokered by John O’Sullivan, CEO of 560 Media; Banijay Rights CEO Tim Mutimer and head of legal and business affairs Jan Rowland.

Meanwhile, a separate deal will also see 560 Media take on secondary rights oversight for Banijay’s children’s distribution subsidiary, Zodiak Kids.

The secondary TV rights market in the UK is believed to be worth an estimated £50m per year, but often remains unpaid due to the specialist and labour-intensive work needed to track and claim payments for secondary royalties, such as retransmission, educational copying, private copying, rental and lending.

560 Media’s other clients include ITV Studios Global Entertainment, BBC Worldwide, Discovery Communications, Avalon, TCB Media Rights, Hat Trick and Expectation Entertainment.

Banijay Rights CEO Tim Mutimer said: “As Banijay Group and Banijay Rights continue to grow, the revenues that we earn through secondary exploitation become ever more valuable and we trust John and his team to deliver strong results and best in class reporting to us.”

560 Media’s O’Sullivan added: “Banijay is quite simply an industry giant, whose deep catalogue is not only a creative gold mine, but a valuable seam of secondary-rights revenues. We look forward to helping Tim and his team to manage their rights in today’s fragmented and increasingly complex marketplace.”