Pact export report: Who’s buying what?

The UK TV Exports report revealed today shows a record-setting £2.02bn of revenue was secured in 2024/25, despite the “challenging” conditions of the global market.

So how are distributors doing it?

The report, compiled by 3Vision, lays out the myriad ways in which rights are being monetised, driven by finished programme sales which hit £1.07bn.

This is up y-o-y but down on 2022/23, meaning the contributions from other sectors are increasingly important.

Indeed, TV sales as a proportion of total export revenues, continues to decline, down from 70% in 2019/20 to 53% in the current reporting year.

Fortunately, other areas are growing. International production rose 8% to £349m, while formats and co-productions grew 13% and 5% year-on-year, reaching £244m and £126m respectively.

Also worth noting the increasingly important ‘other’ category, which houses revenues from licensing ancillary, non-programme rights, such as consumer products. These have increased rapidly over the past three years and now account for a not inconsiderable £212m.

Growing genres  

On the genre front, scripted drama continues to dominate, representing 46% of revenue, with its share of total exports up 3% y-o-y.

Entertainment represents 24% of total export revenue but its share fell by 3% after last year’s 6% rise, while comedy and factual also saw small declines. Kids experienced 2% growth.

Demand from buyers is also shifting. While distributors are still selling to streamers such as Netflix, Prime Video, HBO Max and Paramount+, there a decline across every service.

That contrasts sharply with last year’ report, when only NBCU’s Peacock and HBO Max showed a decline in activity with UK distributors.

Industry prospects seem mixed, according to distributors. The report said half of respondents believe the current challenges facing the industry are temporary, “expecting the market to recover and then remain steady.”

Just under 20% feel further declines will come before stabilisation, against 33% last year, and a further third expect the sector to recover and grow. This contrasts strongly with this time last year, when no distributors expected such a scenario.