It’s become customary in a challenging media environment for associations and think tanks to deliver ‘positive vibe’ reports that tend to focus on green shoots, while glossing over the wider decline of the overall sectoral terrain. But at a special British Screen forum (BSF) event in London on Wednesday 18th September, a new report by veteran industry analyst Ben Keen refreshingly bucked that trend.
Key trends
‘Show Me The Money: An Investigation into the Dynamics & Future of Film Financing’ showed that having risen to an all-time peak of £9.7bn total spending across all UK film and High-End TV (HETV) production in 2022, this investment fell by 40% last year to £5.8bn. This decline was even more extreme than the 23% fall recorded in 2020 when Covid hit hardest, and effectively wiped out the post-pandemic recovery that the industry has enjoyed in 2021 and 2022.
Total investment in traditional domestic film production fell to its lowest ever level in 2023 – £160m – when domestic HETV production attracted a staggering five times more investment (£812m). Investment from international players in UK films has also now come under pressure. Total inward investment in UK film production fell by 46% in 2023, which equates to a £1.4bn fall in the total sum injected into the sector by international players compared to 2022.
Unique insights
Throughout its pages, ‘Show Me The Money’ delivers a wealth of unique insights, highlighting for example that only 10% of producers have gone onto make more than one film, and 92% of these have made no more than three. At the global level, the streaming market has now entered a profit-centric phase, which means that the ‘content arms race’ for streaming market dominance is largely over.
The report also sets out five potential solutions to some of these key challenges, including:
- Development of ‘media management’ skils
- Fostering corporate partnerships for diversification
- Encouraging more professional investment in the equity of production ventures
- Creating mechanisms for ongoing public and private investment in British talent beyond debut films.
- Using the application process for the new Audio-Visual Expenditure Credit (AVEC) as a secure mechanism for aggregating new datasets on financing trends
Event extras
In addition to unveiling the finding’s of Keen’s report, the BSF event also included a panel session conducted under the Chatham House Rule. Hosted by Screen Digest’s Matt Mueller, this discussion brought together a cross-section of industry experts to give their view on the current state of the sector at large, including voices from the investment, production, commissioning, and sales sections of the industry.
For my part, I even got a chance to sit down with BSF CEO, Pete Johnson, to record the upcoming episode of the Colloquiapedia podcast, which will focus on the word ‘Television’. As the report unveiled at the event showed, the lines between what we think of as traditional and emerging screen entertainment are becoming increasingly blurred, and it was useful to get the inside track on how the industry itself conceptualises the medium of television today.
All episodes of the Colloquiapedia podcast are available here (Television coming shortly) and you can find further information on the BSF and ‘Show Me The Money’ report here.