Sale of Love/Hate and Smother helps RTÉ commercial arm to profits of €11.79m
Gordon Deegan
The sales of Love/Hate, Smother and The Clinic to TV stations overseas helped programme sales increase by over 90 per cent at RTE’s commercial arm last year.
New accounts filed by RTÉ Commercial Enterprises DAC show that pre-tax profits last year increased by 3 per cent from €11.44 million to €11.79 million.
The company recorded the increase in profits as revenues rose by 3 per cent from €19.28 million to €19.88 million.
A spokesman for RTÉ said: “The increase in RTÉ programme sales was driven by RTÉ's strong new and back catalogue of great local drama, which included unprecedented sales of Love/Hate in the UK and USA, as well as sales of Smother to multi-territories and The Clinic concerning a licence renewal in the USA.”
Love-Hate became a broadcasting phenomenon when it aired between 2010 and 2014 on RTÉ, spanning five series and 28 episodes, and its appeal continues overseas
The directors for RTÉ Commercial Enterprises state that "while Digital Player Licensing generated the most income for the year, the highest performing area was programme sales, which was over 90 per cent up on the prior year”.
The accounts show that the company recorded post-tax profits of €487,000 from its then joint venture, GAA GO, with the GAA.
Revenues at the GAA GO firm last year increased by 8.5 per cent to €5.49 million as the streaming service continued to face a GAA fan and political backlash for putting certain GAA championship games behind a paywall.
Profits at GAA GO last year increased by 28pc from €761,000 to €975,000, and RTÉ Commercial Enterprises received a €500,000 dividend from its joint venture.
RTÉ has since sold its 50 per cent share in the GAA GO business to the GAA, and directors for RTÉ Commercial state that professional fees from the proposed sale of GAA GO contributed to overall operating costs last year, increasing by 4 per cent to €8.6m.
The directors stated that at the time of the signing of the financial statements on May 13th, the negotiations to sell GAA GO were in the process of being finalised.
Elsewhere in their report, the directors state that “PIC (Programme Interaction Competitions) revenues experienced another challenging year and were down significantly 35 per cent on 2023 as the level of audience engagement with TV competitions continues to decline”.
They also state that total RTÉ Guide copies sold in 2024 of 1.43 million, including the Christmas edition, which was 200,000 of this.
They state that “we expected that there would be a continued decline in the print market with a budgeted decrease in volumes sold of 7 per cent year on year, and this is in line with the actual out-turn of 6.7 per cent.
They state that the increased price resulted in a moderate increase in guide circulation income versus the prior year, meaning the guide performed well despite the lower volumes sold.
The directors state that “advertising revenue for the RTÉ Guide further declined year on year as the magazine advertising market proved challenging”.
The company recorded post-tax profits of €11.6 million after incurring a corporation tax charge of €182,000.