The SpringHill Company and Fulwell 73 have joined forces in a merger of equals that aims to make the enlarged company a bigger player across TV, film, live events, branded content and commercials and consumer products.
SpringHill, the production banner headed by LeBron James and his longtime partner Maverick Carter, will come under the same roof as Fulwell 73, the company founded nearly 20 years in the U.K. ago by partners Ben Winston, Leo Pearlman, James Corden, Ben Turner and Gabe Turner. The new company will have offices in Los Angeles, New York, London and Sunderland in the U.K.
Carter and Pearlman, who is based in Sunderland, will serve as co-CEOs. The deal is expected to close by year’s end.
SpringHill has been busy with a wide range of documentaries, sports-related unscripted content and “The Shop,” the HBO series hosted by James and Carter that feature celebrity friends in a barber shop setting to “speak honestly on sports, music, pop culture and more.” SpringHill is working on everything from a docuseries on USC women’s basketball star JuJu Watkins’ (“On the Rise: JuJu Watkins”) to the “A Motown Christmas” holiday special from NBC and Peacock. Its Netflix productions include the NBA docuseries “Starting 5” and scripted movies “Rez Ball” and Adam Sandler starrer “Hustle.” Last month, SpringHill signed a deal with France’s Mediawan to develop film and TV projects for the U.S. and other markets.
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Fulwell 73 is known for producing live events including the past few Grammy Awards telecasts on CBS, the Los Angeles half of the Paris-to-Los Angeles Summer Olympic games handoff in August and the Hulu reality series “The Kardashians.” It also produced the 2021 CBS concert special “Adele: One Night Only” and Disney+’s 2022 global live stream for Elton John’s farewell tour performance from Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium. Its documentary titles include “Ed Sheeran: The Sum of It All” for Disney+ and the soccer docuseries “Sunderland ‘Til I Die” for Netflix. Fulwell also expects to soon break ground on a film and TV production facility in Sunderland, CrownWorks Studio.
Fulwell 73 partner Leo Pearlman, who will serve as co-CEO of the enlarged company alongside Maverick Carter
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Winston and Carter confirmed to Variety in a joint interview that no money is changing hands in the merger. But all of the shareholders in the still-unnamed new company have committed to contributing $40 million in new capital to drive the expanded venture’s growth initiatives. The list of investors includes those who have backed SpringHill since its formation in 2020: Fenway Sports Group, RedBird Capital Partners, UC Investments, Nike, Epic Games and Main Street Advisors.
Eldridge Industries, which is a business partner of Variety parent PMC, is the sole outside investor in Fulwell 73 and is staying with the new entity. SpringHill was valued at $725 million in 2021 when it got a capital infusion from RedBird.
Fulwell 73 has been a prolific shop ever since it arrived in the U.S. along with Corden in 2015 to produce CBS’ “The Late Late Show.” But Winston, who is based in Los Angeles, recognized that Fulwell 73 for all its success needed to be more diversified in its approach to developing, producing and distributing content.
“I didn’t want us to stand still and ultimately just be a production company where more and more you are in the services business. We’re producers for hire,” Winston said. “It’s very, very difficult and and the bar has changed a lot for us in a streaming-dominated world.”
SpringHill’s success with its New York-based brand consulting firm Robot impressed the Fulwell 73 partners. So did the company’s sophisticated approach to business and controlling long-term rights to the company’s IP. He points to “The Shop,” an unscripted series that James and Carter have hosted and produced for HBO since 2018 and how that compares to Fulwell’s experience launching the buzzy “Carpool Karaoke” format as a segment of CBS’ “Late Late Show.”
“I looked at SpringHill and the impact they have in the branding world. I looked at their commercials agency. I looked at Robot. And I also looked at the shows that they’ve done, like ‘The Shop,” which is a show that starts on Max, and then moves to YouTube, where they control the rights,” Winston said. “They control the IP. There are brands involved in that show in a meaningful way, and now it has ended up in a load of products that you can buy in Walmart. If we’d had that mentality back in the ‘Carpool Karaoke’ days, it would have been a very, very different outlook for us.”
The deal creates a company that is active in unscripted content, documentaries, live events, scripted TV and film, branded content and commercials. Carter and Winston, who have been friends for 10 years, first began discussing a possible deal about a year ago after a casual dinner meeting. The two realized that their companies had complementary strengths and that both would benefit from having a more diversified revenue base.
Carter told Variety that he has admired Fulwell’s skill at executing large-scale live events such as its concert specials and in managing unscripted franchises such as “Carpool Karaoke.” Together, the leaders of both companies have the connections to thrive and command top dollar for hot entertainment and media properties. Fulwell’s strength in the U.K. and Europe will be crucial to expanding “The Shop” format into new territories and languages.
“Although the entertainment world is changing and moving, the one thing that will never change, no matter how it gets distributed … the thing that has always remained constant is that if you make great content with amazing talent and great stars, viewers will want it,” Carter said. “We believe we now have best-in-class capability to do that, and we have the best relationships with talent.”
SpringHill was repped in the deal by Main Street Advisors as well as Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Fulwell 73 was advised by London-based NewShore Partners as well as law firms Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz for U.S. legal and tax matters and Wiggin and Saffreys for U.K. matters.
(Pictured above: Ben Winston, Maverick Carter)
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