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3 weeks ago
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Despite enormous shifts in the global TV industry last year that included the disruptive Hollywood strikes, streamer spend in the UK remained steady at £684M ($895M), according to Pact.
The producer trade body’s annual census, which crunched the numbers from 2023, found total UK producer revenue fell from its record 2022 high by 8% to £3.6B, but revealed the likes of Netflix, Prime Video and Disney continued to splash the cash in strike year.
News of the overall decline was not surprising given that 2023 signaled the end of the boom era, the beginning of market contraction and a major strategic rethink from the U.S. studios, yet streamer spend holding steady is testament to their commitment to the UK, according to Pact boss John McVay.
Even though broadcasting union Bectu reported that 80% of its members were in some way hit by the strikes, McVay said the WGA and SAG’s action may have been overstated.
“2023 was clearly a challenging year for the streaming industry and we saw change, cuts and delays, but indies did pretty well,” he said, responding to a question from Deadline at a briefing yesterday morning. “Shows with Americans in them clearly couldn’t be produced but for the Brits we kept working. There was some sabre-rattling going on as unions showed solidarity but that is natural and ultimately we had British shows contracted under British agreements.”
McVay praised Netflix for being “a big part of” the ecosystem but also pointed to huge shows from rivals such as Apple TV+’s Slow Horses. Netflix has had big UK hits of late such as The Gentlemen and Baby Reindeer, while a splashy slate unveiled six months ago included big-budget shows from Steven Knight, Jack Thorne and Jamie Dornan. More, including a Victoria Beckham and Take That doc, were unveiled at the Edinburgh TV Festival last month. Next week, Netflix boss Ted Sarandos will address the UK industry via an RTS London keynote.
Even with streamers continuing to spend, international revenue for TV producers fell by £200M, around the same figure as domestic revenue, showing that linear buyers were less present in the market both at home and abroad during what was a tricky year. International sales of UK shows did increase slightly in 2023 by £20M to £209M, demonstrating continued appetite for British IP.
Multichannel tumble
Elsewhere, the census found that while traditional PSB spend fell by a minute 2% to £1.48B, multichannel spend from networks such as Sky and UKTV tumbled by 35% to £303M, making up the majority of the overall decline.
McVay said this didn’t come as a “surprise” but hopefully signals a “correction from the boom period” rather than “downward trajectory.”
“We knew there would be a correction and these channels are affected by the same economic headwinds as our commercial PSBs such as churn, subscriptions, ad spend and the cost-of-living crisis,” he added. “These factors all ultimately lead to how much money they have to spend on content.”
With 2024 feeling so far equally as rough as 2023, McVay said it is “too early” to say what will happen from 2025 onwards. Following a number of indie closures and acknowledgement at Edinburgh by TV bods that there are “too many indies,” he pushed back against the notion that producers simply need to “stay alive until 2025.”
“What does that mean?,” queried McVay. “What if 2025 is tougher than 23/24? If broadcasters made clear what their future plans were – not precisely but just something – then [producers] could plan a bit more. For a mature industry I don’t think that’s unreasonable to ask so that [producers] can have some idea what the market will do next year or going into 2026.”
He reiterated his desire for the sector to return to the days of annual 5% growth with little fluctuation.
