The U.K. will maintain its position as the leading entertainment and media market in Europe over the next four years, ahead of Germany and France, according to PwC’s Global Entertainment & Media (E&M) Outlook 2023-2027 report.
U.K. E&M revenue is expected to reach £85 billion ($108 billion) this year with growth forecast at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4% over the next four years to generate revenue of £100 billion overall by 2027. The report predicts that the next biggest European E&M markets – Germany, which is expected to reach £83.1 billion in 2023 and France, set to touch £54.6 billion in 2023 – will grow to £90.8 billion and £61.1 billion by 2027 respectively.
In the U.K. SVOD revenue is forecast to grow from £3.6 billion in 2023 to £4.7 billion by 2027. En route, in 2025, SVOD (£4.2 billion) will overtake TV subscriptions (£4.1 billion). The report notes that the rising presence of AVOD offers consumers the chance to switch away from subscription models.
Cinema will continue its post pandemic recovery growth over the next four years at 7% CAGR, with box office revenues expected to exceed pre-pandemic levels by 2025 at £1.3 billion.
Internet access is forecast to generate £16.7 billion in revenue this year before growing to £20 billion by 2027. The U.K. market will be driven by mobile internet access and a tipping point will be reached in 2023 when mobile internet will overtake fixed broadband as the biggest contributor to total internet access revenue, the report says. By 2027 mobile internet access revenue will account for 55% of total internet access revenue.
The growth of data services will more than double as annual data consumption rises from 158,000 petabytes in 2022 to 415,000 in 2027. This is linked to greater consumption of streaming services, social video platforms and broadcast VOD services, which will together account for 36% of all data consumption in 2027.
Overall advertising revenue in the U.K. is expected to be £35.7 billion in 2023, with digital dominating. Internet advertising revenue of £27.5 billion is forecast for 2023 before reaching £35.5 billion by 2027, at 6% CAGR. TV advertising is expected to decline by 3% in 2023 as budgets have tightened, but then recover with 4% growth in 2024 to £4.8 billion.
The Virtual Reality market revenue in the U.K. is set to increase from £1.3 billion in 2023 to £2 billion in 2027 at 10% CAGR. VR within video gaming is growing at 22% per annum from 2022 to 2027, supported by new games releases. Between 2022 and 2027 the U.K.’s installed base of VR headsets is forecast to grow from 1.7 million to 4.2 million units. Thanks to the success of the Meta Quest 2, the largest and fastest-growing headset category is now standalone VR, which will represent over 80% of the total installed base in 2027. Apple’s new headset may also act as another stimulus for the market, the report says.
The report also strikes a note of caution saying that the rate of growth is expected to fluctuate year-to-year given variable economic conditions and are muted by sluggish consumer spending.
Both Mary Shelton Rose, partner and U.K. technology, media and telecoms leader at PwC and Dan Bunyan, partner at PwC Strategy&, heralded generative AI as the new force to reckon with both in content creation and advertising.
Celebrities enjoy a lot of benefits from their careers, like wealth that most of us can only dream of, special treatment, and larger than life experiences. However, it does come with the cost of personal freedom. That’s why so many celebrities have to invest in serious security. Life in the spotlight comes with the real fact that they can’t go anywhere without bodyguards. Here are some celebrities with the most expensive and exclusive bodyguards.
Adele is one of the greatest voices of this generation, and fans absolutely love her down to earth personality. Her net worth is at about $190 million, so it makes sense that she has hired security that follows her day and night. She hired Lady Gaga’s former body guard Pete Van Der Been in 2017, who charges $70,000 per year for his services.
Oscar-winning actor Jennifer Lawrence is gunning for the laughs in raunchy comedy “No Hard Feelings.”
“I think it’s time for a good old-fashioned laugh and it really is hard to make a comedy where you’re not offending people,” Lawrence told Sky News on Wednesday. “Everybody in some sense will be offended by this film — you’re welcome.”
In the film, which is rated R in the U.S. and 15 in the U.K., Lawrence stars as a Montauk Uber driver facing bankruptcy who accepts a Craigslist ad to date and seduce an awkward 19-year-old (Andrew Barth Feldman) whose helicopter parents don’t want him leaving for college as a virgin.
“We need to be able to engage with being offended. There was and is like a big overcorrect because we realized there were so many things that we were joking about that we shouldn’t be,” Feldman told Sky News. “I think this movie does a really good job of continuing to push limits while still engaging with the conversation that the things that these people are doing are wrong and not a good idea.”
Lawrence added: “Something we learned from the old-time comedies is mean comedy is not really funny … making somebody feel bad about themselves – other than me making fun of me. But the way that we did it is fine, we figured it out.”
Gene Stupnitsky directs “No Hard Feelings” from a script he wrote with John Phillips. In 2019, Stupnitsky made the raunchy “Good Boys,” a coming-of-age film produced by Seth Rogen and starring Jacob Tremblay, and co-wrote 2011’s “Bad Teacher” and 2009’s “Year One.”
Lawrence, who won the best actress Oscar for “The Silver Linings Playbook,” became a household name for her work as Katniss Everdeen in the four “Hunger Games” movies. She recently told Variety that she’s ready to play the role again.
“No Hard Feelings” opens on June 21 in the U.K. and June 23 in the U.S.
