Switzerland’s investment obligation scheme raised $37m (CHF 30.1m) from broadcasters and streamers to invest in Swiss content in 2024, increasing the funding available for local films and TV dramas by over 30%.
Netflix’s first Swiss TV series Winter Palace was among the first productions to benefit from the new Swiss investment obligation programme.
The investment obligation was introduced in 2024 after a referendum and is informally known in the industry as “Lex Netflix”. It requires all audiovisual services providing film and TV content in Switzerland to invest at least 4% of their annual gross turnover into Swiss production or its promotion.
This includes international streaming platforms like Netflix as well as German or French broadcasters with advertising windows in Switzerland, or Swiss private broadcasters or on-demand services.
Speaking at this week’s Locarno Film Festival, Erdem Karademir, deputy head of the Federal Office of Culture’s (BAK) Distribution and Diversity service with responsibility for overseeing the scheme, reported that the $37m (CHF 30.1m) had been raised from turnover of $933 (CHF752m) in 2024 from 21 domestic and foreign companies operating 51 TV and 19 on-demand services.
Pierre Monnard’s eight-part historical costume drama Winter Palace was the first co-production by Netflix with a Swiss-French speaking public broadcaster, Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS). It was produced by Switzerland’s Point Prod with France’s Oble Studios, and first aired on RTS in December 2024 and on Netflix from February 2025.
Also backed was Michael Krummenacher’s film The Traitor (Landesverräter) produced by Zurich/Berne-based Contrast Film with SRF and investment from the Swisscom pay-TV subsidiary Blue. Krummenacher’s Second World War drama premiered at last year’s Zurich Film Festival before being released in Swiss cinemas by Ascot Elite in October 2024.
In addition, backing was made available by Blue for Austrian filmmaker Johanna Moder’s Berlinale 2025 competition title Mother’s Baby and Dutch writer-director Jan-Willem van Ewijk’s Alpha, the winner of the Europa Cinema label at the Venice Film Festival last year.
Karademir explained that audiovisual companies have various options for investment through the scheme. “They can invest in co-productions, presales, the licenses of independent films or series, or in commissioned films if they are produced by an independent company in Switzerland who is independent of any service subject to the investment obligation.”
In 2024, a total of $11.5m (CHF9.3m) was invested in the acquisition and production of films and series, with $7.3m (CHF5.9m) on pre-purchases of rights to feature-length films or series, $2.5m (CHF2m) on co-productions, and $1.7m (CHF1.4m) on licenses for existing films.
“Broadcasters have a few more options in that they can invest in the promotion of the Swiss film industry, for instance by putting up ads in their channels for new releases in the cinemas, or ads for film festivals or other film-related organisations,” Karademir noted, adding that this particular form of investment is capped to $624,000 (CH 500,000) per year and per TV channel.
In the first year, broadcasters invested $6m (CHF4.9m) in kind in film promotion activities and $1.6m (CHF1.3m) went to Swiss film festivals to strengthen film culture.
While BAK has been involved in the implementation of the investment obligation, it does not have any role in the application procedure. The audiovisual services that are subject to the investment obligation negotiate and contract directly with the independent Swiss production companies.
According to BAK’s provisional figures, around $20m (CHF16m) of the total $37m (CHF30.1m) was invested by 10 companies in production, rights acquisition or promotion activities in 2024, while the remaining $17.4m (CHF14m) of postponed payments must be invested up to 2027.
As Karademir pointed out, “the 4% investment obligation doesn’t have to be fulfilled [within] every year as the companies have a four-year investment period and we will then add up their [total] turnover over the four years and calculate the 4%. If they haven’t then fulfilled this 4% obligation, they would be subject to a supplementary levy, but we are not at that point yet.”
The $37m (CHF30.1m) raised by the investment obligation means that Switzerland now has almost a third more financing available for its film and TV industry, adding to the $116m (CHF93.5m) industry funding available in 2024. Other sources of Swiss funding include $26.7m (CHF21.5m) from the Federal Office of Culture (BAK); $7.4m (CHF6m) from the PICS rebate incentive; $42.2m (CHF34m) from Swiss public TV; $16.1m (CHF13m) from film fund Zurich Filmstiftung; $13.1m (CHF10.6m) from the Cinéforom fund; and another $10.4m (CHF8.4m) from other regional funds.
Since 2018, 16 countries in the EU have chosen to impose financial obligations on audiovisual services so they invest more in European films, documentaries and TV dramas. These take the form of levies that are paid into national film and TV funds and/or investment obligations that mandate a certain amount of spending on European productions.
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