Defining the AV broadcast market

The AV broadcast segment is growing in value twice as fast as sales into traditional broadcast and media companies, according to Tom Morrod, Research Director and co-founder at Caretta Research.

Caretta’s latest research indicates that the overall growth of AV broadcast is 5.3% in 2024 versus 1.8% for broadcast and media companies, with AV broadcast expected to grow by 3.5% CAGR versus 2.2% for broadcast and media over 2023-28.

“The wider [US]$85bn media and technology market is slow growing, with $72bn of that still going to traditional broadcast buyers, leaving around $15bn going to AV broadcast buyers in the corporate, education, government, sports clubs and federations, and performing arts world,” says Morrod.

Morrod defines the term ‘AV broadcast’ as media technology products and services that are sold to non-traditional buyers – that is, outside the traditional market of broadcasters, operators, streaming services and live production. “Because equipment and products are cheaper over the last few years, it’s slowly filtering into different environments where video production isn’t their core business, but a nice additional offering,” he notes.

Sports clubs and leagues lead the way in terms of investment, producing their own interviews of players, training videos and fan zone content to create additional engagement. Corporate, events and performing arts are hot on their heels, with other big buyers including government, education, houses of worship, hospitality, venues and healthcare.

Ciarán Doran is Chair of the AV Broadcast Summit, which takes place on 5 February at ISE 2025. He also sees niche content being created by corporates and brands in fashion, sports, banking, services and education worlds and distributed to very wide audiences unlimited by geography. “Calling it AV broadcast seemed like a good way to make a distinction between what the corporates and brands are seeking to do versus what TV broadcasters are already doing,” says Doran.

He feels the industry is paying attention now not because AV broadcast is a new buzzword, but because it has involved a fundamental shift between the roles of the chief information officer and the chief marketing officer.

“AV was traditionally an IT matter, but the CMO has now woken up to what the creation of broadcast quality storytelling affords their organisation. I see rapid growth coming from increased understanding at board level of the huge possibilities that direct video engagement brings,” concludes Doran. “If eyeballs are moving to other areas to get their content, and those areas are creating and delivering in different ways, then broadcast manufacturers need to be involved.”

Morrod adds that from a product perspective, the largest volume of AV broadcast sales are for content acquisition tools such as cameras; solutions for production and post-production like editing and VFX; and live production equipment such as switchers and live graphics generators.

“When we factor in services versus products, the majority of spend is on production services,” he concludes. “While AV broadcast might not be radically changing the dynamics of the market right now, it’s changing the dynamics of how vendors sell, delivering a wider set of buyers, different use cases and new opportunities for vendors.”

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