Part 4 of the Media Act 2024 amends the regulatory regime for on-demand programme services (“ODPS”) under Part 4A of the Communications Act 2003. As part of our implementation of the changes, on 30 May 2025 we delivered a report to the Secretary of State on the operation of the market in the United Kingdom (“UK”) for ODPS and non-UK ODPS. This was at the request of the Secretary of State in a letter to Ofcom dated 17 September 2024. The Secretary of State is required to take account of this report before making regulations to provide that an ODPS, or a non-UK ODPS, becomes a Tier 1 service. Those services will be subject to new standards to help protect UK audiences and, requirements to provide subtitling, signing and audio description.
We carried out a thorough analysis of the ODPS and non-UK ODPS market in the UK to understand:
- Audiences: the number of users and subscribers of, comparing time spent and engagement between services and explaining how content is accessed.
- Revenue and other business information: UK and global turnover of providers, the revenue models and the size of the ODPS and non-UK ODPS providers that operate services available to UK audiences.
- Content availability and investment: the size, nature, target audience profiles and value of content catalogues, including hours available on each service and spend on content.
- Potential to cause harm to UK audiences: compliance by providers of notified services with existing ODPS rules, ODPS and relevant non-UK ODPS complaints handling policies and the nature of the complaints that Ofcom receives about these services.
In accordance with section 368HB(10) of the Communications Act 2003, information provided to OFCOM by ODPS and non-UK ODPS, may be shared with the Secretary of State, but may not be further shared. Due to the report’s reliance on this information, OFCOM will not be making this report publicly available.