Sports producer IMG tops the Production 100, Televisual’s annual survey of the UK television production sector, for the third year in row.
IMG’s credits include an array of sports, from horse racing, snooker and Wimbledon tennis through to Premier League football.
Published in the September issue of Televisual, the Production 100 has ranked the leading production outfits in the UK every year since 1993.
Avalon TV, part of the Avalon Entertainment empire, comes in second place, with TV highlights this year including C4 comedy hit Catastrophe and BBC2’s Russell Howard’s Good News.
The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent co-producer Thames is ranked in third place this year, while Bad Education, Peaky Blinders and Fortitude producer Tiger Aspect takes fourth position.
TOWIE producer Lime is fifth, while Educating the East End inide Twofour is ranked sixth. Sports indie Sunset+Vine is 7th, drama outfit Left Bank is 8th, Call the Midwife indie Neal Street takes 9th and Googlebox producer Studio Lambert is 10th.
Meanwhile, Twofour was voted the most admired indie by its fellow producers in the Production 100 Peer Poll, followed by The Garden and Love Productions.
The combined turnover of the top 100 production companies stands at £1.77bn this year, down from last year’s £1.93bn and 2013’s £2.1bn.
This points to a downturn in the sector, although strict year on year comparisons are difficult to make as a small number of indies chose not to take part in the Production 100 each year.
In their absence we conclude that the fortunes of the sector have plateaued this year. A number of larger producers – such as Avalon, Tiger Aspect and Hat Trick – have had a very good year, with turnover significantly up.
A handful of drama outfits – Left Bank, Neal Street and Red – have also seen turnover shoot up on the back of big budget commissions.
But many of the larger production companies have seen turnover dip, amid signs that growth is becoming harder to achieve in today’s market. Seven out of last year’s top ten have posted turnover falls.
Some of the slack has been picked up by smaller, independent outfits like Arrow, Wild Pictures, Burning Bright, Eleven Film, Minnow Films and Knickerbockerglory.
The top 100 are ranked according to the turnover of their UK operations.
See Televisual’s September issue for the full Production 100 survey.
(The cover image for the Production 100 was designed by Matt Lawrence, head of design at Envy.)
Tim Dams
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