Saudi Arabia has launched the “Saudi Ignite Program” with an estimated budget of $1.12 billion to boost digital content and transform the country into a leading digital entertainment and media production hub.
The program, launched by Saudi Arabia’s Digital Content Council as part of the three-day global tech conference, LEAP, aims to regulate and activate the digital content markets in the country, via facilitating the participation of the private sector in the market through regulations. This is in addition to conducting integrated governance that catalyzes expansion, encourages innovation, and attracts various investments.
Ignite aims to triple Saudi Arabia’s digital content market size in gaming, audio, video and advertising. Through this program, the country plans to include incentives like financial support for local, regional and international companies and startups, infrastructure development, talent development programs and improved policy and regulations to enable the sector to grow rapidly.
The program has also launched 36 initiatives, including those aimed at financing and establishing investment funds to develop local content to promote growth in the video, audio, games, and digital advertisement sectors.
In addition, it launched regulatory initiatives to make revisions to legislation and regulations in order to facilitate work systems and protect data, privacy and property rights.
The Ignite program will supplement the film fund that will be allocated for the infrastructure, development, production and distribution of locally produced movies and another fund that will focus on gaming to develop games and build the required infrastructure such as game studios. These initiatives in various sectors will raise the size of the digital content market in the Kingdom to three times by 2030.
