Across the global content business, the routes to audiences are multiplying – and so are the rights transactions needed to reach them.
These days, a digital studio could find itself building fandom on YouTube, while simultaneously licensing a series to a broadcaster’s streaming service and exploring further opportunities with FAST channels or digital publishers.
A distributor, meanwhile, will be busy negotiating multiple windows for its headline properties while selling library titles into smaller markets and endlessly evolving platforms. Each scenario brings its own complex matrix of territories, languages, exclusivity, licensing windows and payment models.
For rights owners, the goal is to make the same content work harder across different outlets. The challenge is managing those overlapping rights and relationships efficiently: knowing what is available, matching it with the right buyer and agreeing terms that protect other sales opportunities. Smaller, incremental deals can add meaningful revenue, provided the work involved does not outweigh their value.
That is the opportunity online rights transaction platform Vuulr is targeting. Relaunched in September with fresh investment, it is developing tools to help producers, distributors and creators reach more buyers, manage the complexity and reduce the administration involved.
“Buyers and sellers are under pressure to move faster, find new opportunities, and extract more value from every piece of content they own,” says co-founder and chief commercial officer Ben Flint (pictured). “This is precisely where Vuulr can help.”
Vuulr’s marketplace brings together rights owners and buyers across film, television, creator content and microdramas. Sellers list programming; broadcasters, streamers and other buyers can discover titles, screen them, check available rights and negotiate directly. The marketplace operates on a transparent and competitive commission, with no upfront joining or listing fees.
For Flint, the value of the Vuulr proposition lies in making connections that might otherwise be difficult to pursue. An independent producer with limited sales resources can put a film in front of international buyers. A distributor can make library programming available in territories where it lacks a dedicated sales presence, without diverting its team from priority negotiations.
The same logic can apply to headline titles. A sales executive working on a major agreement can also assess an enquiry from a smaller market, negotiate within agreed commercial parameters and add another deal to the total. “Because Vuulr is a user-friendly, always-on platform, those opportunities are easy to manage between meetings, market trips and larger negotiations,” says Flint.
For digital studios and creators, there is another dimension: treating content as a catalogue of licensable rights alongside its role in building a channel and generating platform revenue. Vuulr already accommodates web series and microdramas, and its screening players can display vertical content. That gives buyers a way to assess programming in its intended format, rather than requiring creators to reshape everything around conventional television presentation.
Flint says there is definitely scope for professionally produced creator programming to travel across different types of buyer. “A web series could find an additional home with a broadcaster’s digital service; a short-form slate could be assessed by a publisher or another digital platform. The opportunity depends on the content and available rights, but it opens a route to revenue beyond its original outlet.”
Vuulr is working on further developments that will address how buyers evaluate digital programming. Flint identifies audience information, such as average viewership and viewing duration, as useful additions to the listing data. The aim is to help creators present their content’s performance in terms relevant to buyers.
At MIPCOM, Vuulr is extending its offer with VuulrOS, a white-label subscription service that gives sellers their own branded rights sales website. Flint describes the ambition as creating “a Shopify for the industry”.
Where the marketplace brings multiple sellers together, VuulrOS provides an environment devoted to a client’s own titles and buyers. Built on the same underlying technology, it combines searchable catalogues, secure screening rooms, live rights management and integrated offers and negotiations.
Sellers can set commercial controls covering price floors, minimum guarantees, revenue-share offers and FAST bundles. Rights management covers online and offline deals, helping teams maintain a consistent view of what is available. Chat, notifications and contract-expiry alerts support ongoing activity.
The proposition is particularly relevant to studios building repeatable formats and growing libraries, says Flint. As their output expands, a rights sales operation can become another part of the business, with technology providing infrastructure that a smaller company might struggle to develop independently.
Subscriptions replace the commission model used on the main marketplace. They start at $30 a month for catalogues of up to five titles, with further tiers for larger businesses and custom arrangements for enterprise clients.
The next phase involves connecting more of the licensing process. Further automation is in development, including an AI sales agent with human controls, pricing recommendations and deeper listing and offer analytics. Delivery, localisation, billing and reporting functionality is planned with partners for 2027.
The direction is towards a more connected journey, reducing the need to move information manually between discovery, negotiation and the work that follows an agreement. Flint’s shorthand for that ambition is “no more spreadsheets”.
“For years, the industry has talked about digital transformation while a surprising amount of the business of rights trading is still labouring with emails, spreadsheets and manually maintained systems,” he says.
Throughout this development, Flint stresses that Vuulr is designed to complement the relationship-led nature of the distribution business. “The way content is bought has changed,” Flint says. “Buyers want to be able to discover, screen and assess titles when it suits them, at any hour and wherever they are in the world. But relationships still matter.”
That balance runs through Vuulr’s entire design, says Flint. “The platform is intended to support sales teams and extend their reach, while leaving crucial commercial decisions and relationships with the people responsible for them.”
For distributors, digital studios and creators, Vuulr’s proposition is ultimately about making content work in more places. Whether through a shared marketplace or an own-brand sales website, it offers infrastructure for exploring new buyers and building a rights business around slates of any size and composition.
Vuulr is showcasing VuulrOS at MIPCOM, Palais -1, stand P-1.G51.
