The UK Creative Immersive Landscape 2020: Business Models in Transition

This report is a result of research conducted by Digital Catapult on behalf of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), in collaboration with the Audience of the Future Demonstrator programme in 2020. It provides a detailed overview of the market of creative immersive productions in the UK.

Digital Catapult’s previous research on behalf of UKRI, published as Audience of the Future, The Immersive Audience Journey, discussed ways of thinking about immersive audiences more holistically when planning and executing a production. It concluded that a more focused understanding of the target audience is key to the success of future immersive productions, and that success might not be qualified in terms of massive mainstream breakthroughs, but rather as more comprehensive reach and engagement with niche audiences that are both intensely interested in the work and large enough to be commercially viable.

This research picks up from this conclusion, exploring the challenges in reaching commercial viability, and ways in which a company might scale up from that point to becoming a sustainable business.

The UK Creative Immersive Landscape 2020 report is aimed at understanding where the biggest obstacles lie in making creative immersive productions commercially viable and scalable, whether location-based or digitally distributed.

The results paint a holistic picture of the creative immersive landscape in 2020: the opportunities and the challenges that immersive producers within the creative industries face when they pursue projects from initial conception to launch. The research answers the need for accessible tools for development by introducing business model innovation tools, aimed at helping creative producers to rethink their business logic.

For more information and to read the report in full, access the publication below.