Israeli Dating Format 'New Love' Heads to the Global Market Ahead of MIPCOM
Four women. Seventy-two hours. A house shared with a stranger. After three days, each woman decides: keep going, or start over with someone new. That is the engine of New Love, a dating format that Dori Media Group is launching to international buyers ahead of MIPCOM — the annual television trade fair held in Cannes, France, set to take place in just over a month from publication.
The format comes from Abot Hameiri, the Israeli production house behind the hit scripted drama Shtisel and the dating format Power Couple, which has been adapted in more than 25 territories worldwide. Abot Hameiri is owned by Fremantle, the global production and distribution group, which acquired 100% of the company in 2021 (Variety; The Hollywood Reporter). Dori Media, which specialises in distributing unscripted formats to international markets, is now bringing New Love to buyers looking for their next dating-show commission.
The format is not a fresh experiment. It has already run for five seasons on Israel's Reshet 13 channel under the title Ahava Hadasha. The numbers from the fifth season give Dori Media something concrete to pitch: overall audience was up 40% compared to season three, and the 25–34 demographic — a key advertising target — surged by 250%. A sixth season is now in pre-production, meaning the original broadcaster is still invested even as the format goes global (Deadline).
Abot Hameiri's track record in dating formats runs deeper than New Love. In 2020, the company created Find Me Somebody To Love with Reshet for the Israeli market; it premiered on Reshet 13 and was recommissioned after its first season (Variety; Fremantle). Fremantle added that format to its global sales slate the same year, signalling the company's early bet on Israeli dating shows as exportable properties.
Power Couple, Abot Hameiri's other relationship format, recently broke new ground with a first-ever 24/7 version — a round-the-clock, always-on variant — that launched across Televisa and Univision's platforms in the U.S. Hispanic market and Mexico. A separate collaboration between Abot Hameiri and Dori Media, the game show The Auction, recently premiered on América Televisión in Peru. Dori Media is also bringing the trivia-based game show Smart Face to its MIPCOM slate (Dori Media).
For viewers, the international launch of New Love means the format could land on a screen near them. When a format is presented at a market like MIPCOM, broadcasters and streaming platforms from dozens of countries send buyers to evaluate whether a show might work for their audience. A deal made in Cannes can mean a local version months later — a different cast, a different house, the same 72-hour clock.
Nadav Palti, CEO of Dori Media Group, and Roee Strikovski, CEO of Abot Hameiri, are positioning New Love as the centrepiece of their joint offering at the market. Whether international buyers bite will depend on those Israeli ratings, the pitch, and whether the accelerated live-in concept feels fresh enough in a dating-show landscape that has already tried everything from blind pods to island escapes.
