The pandemic has caused an unprecedented demand boom and revenue windfall for the games industry, allowing developers to ease production bottlenecks, assist remote working, and spend more cash on games that matter.

Producing quality game experiences remotely—from greenlight through to release—has driven innovation and flexibility, and much needed change for game studios.

Most large game developers expect a return to in-studio development late in Q3 2021. Many workers hope a return will not also bring back toxic game production environments.

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The Creative Industries accounted for 6% of UK GVA in 2019, more than the automotive, aerospace, life sciences and oil and gas industries combined. The UK’s Creative Industries are the largest in Europe and are central to promoting the UK’s soft power globally.

At the core of the creative economy is the AV sector, which, in turn, is driven by the UK’s PSBs. In 2019, the PSBs were responsible for 61% of primary commissions outside London and are the pillar upon which much additional regional economic activity depends.

Going forward, only the PSBs are likely to have the willingness and scale to invest in production centres outside London with sufficient gravitational pull to reorientate the wider creative economy towards the nations and regions.

ITV continues to battle the stop-start nature of Britain’s reaction to COVID-19, with Q3 and Q4’s cautious advertising recovery stunted by the current lockdown. However, from April onwards things are expected to be looking up.

Studios has been hit similarly hard, with worldwide stoppages on content production, but ITV notes that over 90% of productions are back in production.

UK subscriber numbers for BritBox were announced for the first time—it hit 500k in January—the number being neither alarming nor particularly impressive.

Growth in the UK production sector is being driven by increased investment by American streaming services, while local broadcasters rely on co-productions to fund increasingly-expensive, high-end content. 

However, while this investment is welcome, our analysis shows that the output is predominantly less ‘British’ than that commissioned directly by local broadcasters.

Distinctive and diverse British cultural touchpoints are created or perpetuated by television. Current trends suggest a dilution of this, a globalisation of local content, and perhaps less relevance to British viewers.

Despite linear TV viewing benefiting from recent lockdowns, across 2020 it still declined among younger audiences. Online video habits have solidified, most notably for adults in their 30s and 40s

As a result, traditional broadcasters are more vulnerable now than ever before. Long term, we forecast their audiences to fall further than previously expected—down to 61% of all video viewing in 2027 from 72% today—as streaming platforms make ever-deeper inroads

Given linear TV’s reliance on older cohorts, plus an ageing UK population, we predict that two-thirds of traditional broadcasters’ viewing in 2027 will come from over-55s, with less than 13% from under-35s

The games industry enjoyed a robust 2020, with the pandemic creating high demand across titles and platforms. Now a core part of the mainstream media and entertainment ecosystem, games share of entertainment spend and audience viewing time will maintain momentum and increase in 2021.

The demand for, and value of, premium content has migrated to game IP, with top franchises driving increased M&A activity and tighter integration with film and TV output, and providing an important advertising channel.

The pandemic has provided breathing space for the industry on regulatory scrutiny of revenue models, and overall consumer safety. Regulators need to increase their speed in 2021, and act decisively on predatory ‘free-to-play’ game mechanisms.

The value of certain sports rights can be appraised through three major metrics: the ability to command viewing/engagement, the ability to drive subscriptions incremental to other rights, and the propensity of those subscribers to provide the rights holder with additional revenues.

In this report we examine these three metrics in order to gain an understanding of the tensions in the market, along with the reasons as to why there is competition (or not) for certain rights.

Unsurprisingly, outside of a few primary sports rights, there are an abundance of secondary rights which find it difficult to display their value over others. Their value relies just as heavily on whether rights holders are committing to, or retreating from, major rights.

The issues surrounding ITV Digital are complex and unclear. This report tries to unpick the tangled threads. It looks at the main financial issues and the manoeuvres with the BBC, the Office of Fair Trading and the set-top box manufacturers.

This note has been prompted by a flurry of activity in UK television media: the renaming of ONdigital (‘ITV Digital’) and its absorption into the ITV mother ship; the launch of ITV Sport, a new pay-TV channel aimed at sports enthusiasts; the impending final results of BSkyB (‘Sky’) on 25th July 2001 (dealt with in a separate note issued on 20th July) and the renewed concerns over the funding of the UK cable companies.

ITV Digital itself stresses the importance of thinking about the 'platform' and its associated channel, ITV Sport separately. ITV Digital and its shareholders, Carlton and Granada, are highly optimistic about the future performance of the platform. We look at each of the many reasons for optimism that they have advanced. There is strength in many of their arguments, but we still see their breakeven target as very difficult to achieve.

This note considers the so-called 'digital dividend' in light of the recent ITV licence renewals.

The UK online population reached 17 million in February 2001, up around one-quarter on the year, on the strength of rising participation of women (to 44% of users) and of young people. We expect 4 million users to be added to the online population by February 2002, to reach 21 million, with growth at a lower rate than in 2000.