Profits double at RTE commercial arm

Pretax profits doubled at RTE’s commercial arm to €11.44 million last year on the back of renewed digital distribution deals for shows concluded in respect of RTÉ Player licensing.
New accounts for RTÉ Commercial Enterprises DAC show pretax profits surged by 106 per cent after revenues increased 16 per cent to €19.28 million.
Operating costs fell 28 per cent to €8.2 million. That was mainly due to costs tied to “Toy ShowThe Musical” which were booked in 2022 did not recur in 2023.
Documents released by RTÉ last year revealed that Toy Show The Musical lost about €2.2 million.
The RTÉ company’s profits were also boosted last year by its €381,000 profit share from the broadcaster’s controversial GAA Go joint venture with the GAA.
The profit share from GAA Go was an 18pc increase on the profit share of €323,000 in the prior year as revenues at the GAA Go joint venture doubled from €2.4 million to €5.06 million in 2023.
The directors also state that some individual revenue lines, such as Radio Promotions and TV Programme Sales “returned moderate increases in revenues”.
The increases in revenues in those areas were offset by reductions in revenues for the RTÉ Guide and Special Live Events.
The directors state that Programme Interaction Competitions (PIC) revenues “experienced another challenging year and were flat year on year as the level of audience engagement with TV competitions has not returned to pre-Covid levels”.
The directors also state that RTÉ Guide copy sales “were down 7.6 per cent year on year, in line with a magazine market that is estimated to have declined by 8 per cent”.
The directors reveal that total copy sales of 1.53 million for the year included a 6 per cent decline in sales of the flagship Christmas issue which sold 225,355 copies compared to sales of 240,600 copies in 2022.
They state that advertising revenue for the RTÉ Guide also declined year on year as the magazine advertising market proved challenging.
Pay to contractors by the firm last year decreased sharply from €638,000 to €97,000 while employee costs decreased from €2.74 million to €2.1 million.
Numbers employed declined by two to 25 in commercial/merchandising and editorial and content production roles.
At the end of December last, the company’s accumulated profits totalled €125 million. Cash funds increased from €1.9m to €6.6 million.