International sales of Dublin gangland drama, Kin last year contributed to pre-tax profits at RTE’s commercial arm rising by 7 per cent to €6.62 million.
New accounts filed by RTE Commercial Enterprises DAC show that the business recorded the increase in pre-tax profits despite revenues declining marginally from €15.11 million to €14.87 million last year.
One of the stand-out performances for the RTE subsidiary last year was its sales generated from TV programmes which increased by 25 per cent on 2020.
The directors of the firm state that the sales increase arose from "the sale of a small number of RTE productions".
During last year, RTE announced that AMC+ had acquired the rights to Kin for North America, Australia, New Zealand, Iberia, Latin America and the UK. The show was also purchased by Dutch TV station NPO.
Kin starring Aiden Gillen and Clare Dunne is produced by BRON Studios and Headline Pictures in association with the State broadcaster.
GAAGo success
Another major contributor to the profits of the RTE commercial arm was its sales of GAA matches internationally through its 50-50 joint venture with the GAA.
The RTE doubled its profits from the joint venture last year increasing from €237,000 to €536,000.
GAAGo is aimed at an international market and at the Irish diaspora around the world, featuring over 100 live and on demand games over the year.
Last year, joint venture firm, GAAGO Media DAC increased its revenues by 43 per cent to €2.86m as its profits almost doubled from €550,000 to €1.04 million.
The directors for RTE Commercial Enterprises state that its financial position "continued to be impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic".
They said that Programme Interaction Competitions (PIC) revenues experienced another challenging year and revenues declined by 20 per cent largely as the level of audience engagement with flagship interactive TV competitions has not returned to pre-pandemic levels as restrictions were eased and also due to editorial decisions not to run viewer competitions on certain Late Late Shows in the year.
Instead, those programmes raised funds for individual charities.
The directors state that the RTE Guide "had another strong year in circulation terms and was just one per cent down year-on-year".
The report states that total copy sales of 1.84 million in 2021 included a small 2 per centre decline for the flagship Christmas issue which sold 265,000 copies.
The directors state that advertising revenues which were adversely impacted in 2020 in line with the overall print market "saw a welcome rebound in the year and increased by 29 per cent year on year".
Numbers employed by RTE’s commercial arm last year increased by one to 26 while staff costs increased from €1.88 million to €2.2 million.
