ITV hopes for summer ad boom

ITV is pinning its hopes on an advertising boom in the Euro 2024 football championships as it continues to reel from last year’s Hollywood strikes.

The broadcaster, whose recent hits include Mr Bates vs The Post Office, starring Toby Jones (pictured), said revenues fell 7pc in the first three months of the year to £887m.

It came as the group continues to face the fallout from industrial action in the US, which brought film and TV production to a virtual standstill for nearly four months in 2023.

This meant new productions could not be filmed, which affected programming for this year. Revenues at ITV studios fell 16pc to £382m.

Looking ahead, chief executive Carolyn McCall expects revenues at the studios arm to be ‘broadly flat’ this year. She has said the strike action by writers and actors would push £80m of revenue from 2024 to 2025.

But in brighter news, advertising revenue hit £432m during the quarter, up 3pc from the year before.

McCall last year bemoaned the ‘worst advertising recession since the financial crisis’.

The company behind I’m A Celebrity and Love Island is now pinning its hopes on the Euro 2024 tournament, which starts next month.

ITV expects that its advertising revenues will jump about 12pc in the current quarter.

‘We have a strong pipeline of programmes, good demand for our quality content as we increasingly diversify our customer base towards streamers,’ McCall said.

Shares rose 3pc, or 2.25p, to 76.6p. Adam Vettese, an analyst at investment platform eToro, said: ‘It seems the message is not to panic as most releases are weighted to the second half of the year and the Euros are coming up which will give a much-needed boost to the coffers in terms of viewer numbers and, in turn, advertising revenue.’

The company said that it was on track to deliver £40m of savings this year as it looks to boost profitability.

In March, ITV sold its 50pc stake in BritBox, a subscription streaming service, to BBC Studios for £255m.