Bavaria Fiction Forges Exclusive Partnership with Wattpad for New Source Material

The first of its kind deal in Europe brings data and new voices to Germany’s entertainment market

Munich/Toronto, 18 June 2018: Bavaria Fiction has become the first and exclusive production partner of Wattpad for German-speaking territories. The global multiplatform entertainment company for original stories, has more than 65 million users who spend more than 15 billion minutes a month engaged in reading original stories. Wattpad’s global community of more than 4 million writers has shared more than 500 million stories that are adored by readers around the world.   

The deal sees Bavaria Fiction gain access to more than a million existing German-language stories and its community of more than 1.3 million   people in German-speaking territories. Wattpad currently works with a number of US studios, including Universal Cable Productions, AwesomenessTV, Sony Pictures Television, eOne and CW Seed, among others. The decision to leverage the insights and data from Wattpad’s user base (of which 90% of users are Millennial or Gen Z) is part of Bavaria’s, future-oriented digital strategy for content targeting consumers aged 16-39.

German Wattpad users spend an average of 10 million minutes on the platform every day. Leveraging Wattpad’s billions of data points, Bavaria Fiction will lead the German entertainment market in taking a data-based approach to development. Bavaria Fiction will have the opportunity to develop original IP with built-in audiences based on Wattpad stories.  

“Entertainment companies around the world are recognizing the importance of data-based decision-making,” said Aron Levitz, Head of Wattpad Studios. “Development doesn’t need to rely on guesswork or instinct. The new model we’re building across the industry uses real insights from millions of users and billions of data points, resulting in more wins. We’re thrilled to work with Bavaria Fiction to bring our game-changing model to the German market.”

Jan Kaiser, Managing Director, Bavaria Fiction, said, “In this continuing competitive era in which ‘Content is King’ we have decided to not only seek viewers, but views. Getting on board ideas earlier, using existing data and B2C channels are a key part of production businesses like ours evolving in the digital age, with the added bonus of bringing more of German-speaking creators’ talent to screen.”

Oliver Vogel, Chief Creative Officer, Bavaria Fiction added, “This deal with one of the world’s leading publishing platforms will increase both the scale and reach of our potential development pool as well as the quality of ideas which come across our desks. It is a hugely exciting new partnership for which I would like to personally thank our producer Christina Henne who was crucial in the deal-making process that brought Bavaria Fiction and Wattpad together.”

###

About Bavaria Fiction

Bavaria Fiction (formerly: Bavaria Fernsehproduktion) is one of the most successful production companies in Europe. A subsidiary of Bavaria Film and ZDF Enterprises, the company is headed by managing directors Jan S. Kaiser and Manfred Haus-Pflüger, alongside Chief Creative Officer Oliver Vogel, and has its headquarters in Munich as well as other locations in Cologne, Stuttgart and Berlin.

With approximately 17,000 on-air minutes every year and productions like “Storm of Love”, “The Rosenheim Cops”, “SOKO Stuttgart”, “Inga Lindström” and “Dr. Klein”, Bavaria Fiction programming reaches millions of viewers every week in Germany alone.

In addition to weekly and daily series, movie collections and TV movies, Bavaria Fiction is renowned for ambitious event television including multi-parters “Bella Germania” and “Brecht” as well as international co-productions such as “Deutsch-Les-Landes”, “Arctic Circle” and “Das Boot”, the highly-anticipated new drama series that is inspired by the iconic Oscar and Golden Globe nominated masterpiece by Wolfgang Petersen.

About Wattpad

Wattpad’s vision is to entertain and connect the world through stories. The global multiplatform entertainment company uses the power of community and technology to enable the creation and distribution of content across a variety of formats. Its flagship app, Wattpad, is home to a community of more than 65 million people who spend over 15 billion minutes a month engaged in original stories. Tap by Wattpad, the company’s second storytelling product, offers short, chat-based stories in over a dozen languages. Wattpad Studios co-produces stories for film, television, digital and print, together with industry partners. Wattpad Brand Solutions offers a full suite of advertising products to help brands build deep engagement with Millennial and Gen Z consumers. The company is proudly based in Toronto, Canada. Learn more at: company.wattpad.com