Clwstwr Creative Industries Report No. 2: The media sector in the Cardiff Capital Region - driving economic growth through audiovisual activities

Driving economic growth through audiovisual activity, examines the size, scale and economic contribution of the film and TV sector in the Cardiff Capital Region. It demonstrates the audiovisual media sector – which includes film, television and gaming - has become a key part of the Welsh economy.

The report shows that, after a decade of strong growth, Cardiff now has the third largest film and TV cluster in the UK, after London and Manchester. Better still, by many measures South Wales has been the best performing media cluster outside London, with one in every eight jobs created in the UK between 2015 and 2018 being in the Cardiff Capital Region.  

Our estimation show how targeted funding and further incentives into the local sector to increase productivity could create considerable economic growth and make Cardiff a global hub of media production within the next five to 10 years. This could generate £255m additional Gross Value Added (GVA) and almost 2,000 additional jobs in the audiovisual media sector

The report finds that there are 1,318 firms active in the audiovisual media sector in the Cardiff Capital Region. Together, these firms generated a total annual turnover of £545 million with a further £606 million in GVA produced directly and indirectly.

The sector employs 4,590 full-time employees locally with a further 2,898 full-time roles created to support the media sector. There are also an additional estimated 2,813 freelancers active in the region. In total, more than 10,000 people are employed through the media sector.

This employment data, along with its wider creative ecosystem, have been visualised in the new Creative Economy Atlas Cymru – a platform to showcase the creative might of Wales.

On Tuesday 30 March, Clwstwr held an online launch of the Driving economic growth through audiovisual activity report on the size, scale and economic contribution of the creative industries in the Cardiff Capital Region. They also launched at this event, the Creative Economy Atlas Cymru, a brand-new data visualisation platform to showcase the creative ecosystem in Wales.

This research report was authored by: