‘Booba’ Firm Kedoo Entertainment Unveils ITVX & Nine Network Deals And Live-Action Series As Animation Brand Hits 20 Billion YouTube Views
EXCLUSIVE: For a kids brand that has just hit 20 billion views on YouTube, Booba has somewhat gone under the radar — at least to industry watchers. However, with new several broadcast deals in place and freshly updated formats of the animated show rolling out, the brand is emerging as an important player in the children’s entertainment space.
In a wide ranging interview with Olivier Bernard, COO and co-founder of Booba creator and rights owner Kedoo Entertainment, he revealed Booba Season 5 is now being shopped to networks internationally, with deals with ITVX in the UK, Nine Network in Australia, Star Channel in Greece, RTL in Croatia, VOYO in CEE and CDA Premium in Poland locked in for 2025 launches.
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Booba, which launched on YouTube, is comprised of seven-minute non-dialog comedy episodes that see Booba exploring different scenarios with his friends. Season 5 sees alternative versions of the furry, inquisitive animated character meeting dinosaurs from the prehistoric world and a robot in a futuristic world.
Kedoo’s in-house studio, 3D Sparrow, produces the show, which has previously hit Netflix’s top 10 charts and aired in 45 countries around the world.
Furthermore, Kedoo is also launching four-part education live action series The Booba Show to help children with social skills. The series will see the Booba character entering the real world for the first time alongside a child host, as they show young viewers how to make friends. As with most Kedoo shows, the series will debut on YouTube.
“In Booba, we’ve seen how powerful YouTube can be for creating a hit global franchise and building a huge global community fan base,” said Bernard. “The series which now lives on multiple platforms — broadcast, digital, retail and experiential — around the world. Season 5 is now being presented to everyone, and we’re very happy.”
Booba, which counts Endeavor’s IMG as its licensing and merchandising partner, has sold more than 40,000 plush toys and has 19 million YouTube subscribers, making it a player among emerging global kids brands. While the likes of Bluey are now worth potentially billions of dollars, most children’s entertainment characters fail to cut through and the lack of investment in the space makes establishing something new tough.
However, Bernard said Booba had made waves with audiences and consumers for three reasons. “It’s not a copycat of any other brands, with its cute, fast-paced comedy and has been designed empathically,” he said. “The non-dialog element means you can talk to an audience without having to go through any kind of cultural issues with the language, and that meant when we launched on YouTube we had a big worldwide audience from day one. Then it is the slapstick comedy — it’s a Tom and Jerry that you could have watched 25 or 30 years ago — the difference is we have embedded lots of things that show children how to take care, be inclusive and have empathy for others.”
Bernard, a former gaming industry exec who worked for the likes of Vodafone and Blu Mobile, co-founded Kedoo in 2016 with a mission to launch a digital-first content company. Early days saw Kedoo working with broadcasters to protect their brands on YouTube, but the desire was to go it alone and create new properties, especially after Booba had been developed.
Kedoo had identified video, and kids programming in particular, as an opportunity, but did not want to take the broadcaster-first approach that prevailed at the time. Given the challenges facing the kids biz right now, that looks a smart move, though Bernard has noticed some buyers are softening their stances of exclusivity and rights ownership, as the new deals highlight.
“There has been a slight change in the market in that broadcasters are looking at digital-first brands,” he said. “We certainly part of that, and we believe that the content can work everywhere — on broadcasters, on YouTube and streamers all at the same time, because audiences are using different platforms at different ages and at different times during the day.
“Gone is the day where you had only one way to watch content, and that’s why we advocate a lot when we go and see broadcasters and streamers and say, ‘Okay, this is on YouTube, and we want to keep this on YouTube.’ Five or six years ago, this was a discussion that was a no-go.”
As a privately-held company, Kedoo doesn’t reveal its financials, but during our interview, Bernard repeatedly referred to steady revenue streams helping the business through the tough economic climate of recent years. Since launch, the Dubai-headquartered company has expanded into London, Cairo, Kiev and Moscow (execs have tried to support their colleagues in both Russia and Ukraine during the war) and into factual entertainment and docs through shows scubas Vamos/Let’s Go and The Wonder Guys. Owning the rights to everything it makes gives Kedoo a library of more than 1,000 half-hours and 400+ half-hours of kids content that industry veteran Charlotte Thorp are shopping globally.
The company was also an early adopter of FAST channels, which distributors say are an increasingly lucrative route to market. Overall, Kedoo’s brands currently have around 120 million subscribers on YouTube and collect 1.5+ billion views every month.
Bernard believes the digital-first approach has allowed the company protections others haven’t got. “I understand why there are a lot of companies are struggling right now: You have streamers having one strategy and the broadcasters having another one,” he said. “Then there’s digital, which is always difficult to navigate. Our business model was built on the fact that it’s recurring revenue on a monthly basis. Also, we’re not only making kids content, which means we have a getaway if we need it.”
Creating Kids Brands
Bernard said that while Bluey, in particular, proved new children’s properties can still burst through, the kids TV industry needs “more investment as a whole,” or it will be unable to create new “triple-A brands.” If that’s the case, “Everybody will just watch Peppa Pig and others that were created 25 years ago.”
The key for Booba, Bernard believes, is reinvention. At 3D Sparrow, where he is CEO, the Creative Director is kids industry veteran Debbie MacDonald, who continually tracks the market for how consumption is evolving online. This led to the creation of the 15-minute-long live-action series and editorial tweaks on the original show season by season. “It seems to change every three months,” said Bernard.
“In a difficult market right now, you don’t see many brands appear and we just need to make sure our brand in working for us right now. Booba will continue to work for the forseeable future.”
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