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EXCLUSIVE: Sphere Abacus heads into its first MIPCOM next week with some splashy titles as it attempts to make waves in a crowded market.
The newly-minted outfit was created this summer when Canada’s Sphere Media completed a C$24.6M ($18.2M) deal for UK-based Abacus Media Rights, the UK-based distributor that sells Leaving Neverland and Scrublands. Ahead of jetting into Cannes – with iconic Poirot actor David Suchet joining the party – Managing Director Jonathan Ford and Sphere Media CEO Bruno Dubé spoke to Deadline.
Abacus was only formed in 2020, but Ford saw an opportunity to put the foot on the accelerator with the Sphere deal when the opportunity arose. “We’re the eighth biggest UK distributor, but there’s a big gap between us and the seventh,” he says. “We didn’t own production businesses, we didn’t own IP and to help close that gap, the most appropriate step was to be part of a bigger group.”
Dubé explains the rationale from the Sphere perspective: “The acquisition of Abacus not only gives us access to a greater number of potential partners for the creation and production of high-value content, but also access to a wonderful team for pre-sales and content exploitation.”
Notably, Sphere’s sales division was dwarfed by the Abacus operation, meaning the acquisition is additive and doesn’t create an overlap.
David Suchet Travels To Cannes
For MIPCOM, Sphere Abacus will be joined by David Suchet. The legendary Poirot actor will be in town to promote Travels With Agatha Christie With Sir David Suchet. Abacus helped pull the funding of the Soho Studios and Two Rivers Media show together, with Channel 4 in the UK, Britbox in North America and the Nordics and SBS in Australia all on board, and Sphere Abacus selling other territories now.
The series is a good example of how a distributor can get a project over the line with smart pre-sales or by adding co-production partners. Budgets and costs have increased, but license fees are still restrained, which makes a well-connected and nimble distributor a valuable ally.
Ford says: “Sometimes a distribution advance alone isn’t getting a show funded, so having the relationships in the market where we can look at pre pre-sales and co-pros, as well combine the two if required, and having that ability to move fast, is what independent producers want.”
Other new shows Sphere Abacus has on its first-ever MIPCOM slate include Gunpowder Siege, the Lightbox (Whitney)-produced historical drama starring Chuku Modu. There’s also cat-and-mouse drama Catch You Later [working title] with Jason Watkins and Robson Greene. The factual line-up includes Wasp Woman: Murder of a Cult Movie Queen, the Sundance Now series from Embankment about the murder of B-movie actress Susan Cabot. There’s also BBC and CNN doc Breaking Bird: The Rise and Fall of Twitter.
Sphere is backed by Bell Media, the Canadian giant run by Sean Cohan, who told Deadline last year about his plans to boost the distribution part of the business. Bell also has specialty channels so there are several ways in which it might cooperate with Sphere Abacus.
“It’s great that we share the same interest in expanding our international presence,” says Dubé, adding the Sphere Abacus growth plan also involves making new friends. “We will be able to increase our collaborations with new creation and production partners, enabling us to produce a greater volume of work which will have impact, and we can be proud of as a team.”
With the huge distributor-producer groups only getting bigger – Banijay is snaffling up libraries, All3Media has a rich new owner – and the Hollywood studios are back in the TV sales business, where does Sphere Abacus sit in the pecking order?
“Good content and good teams create good projects and opportunities,” Dubé says. “I dare to believe that we can become as good as the best in our industry in terms of high quality, reputation and notoriety.”
Ford says that Abacus grew during a very tough market in 2023 and 2024, and he spies green shoots as we head into 2025.
“In five years, we would like to have our business three to four times larger in terms of revenue stream. Building on the production business that we’re now part of, building on the association with Bell Media and continuing to build what we’ve been doing anyway and investing in programming will get us there.”
