Sponsorship bids for Great British Bake Off could reach up to £8m
Channel 4 plans to start the sponsorship bidding war for a slice of The Great British Bake off from as much as £8m.
The broadcaster has to try and make back its £75m three year investment in the show, which includes 40 hours of programming a year, professional and celebrity specials and potential for spin-off shows beyond the current 10 hour run of the main programme.
ITV’s director of television Kevin Lygo said last week that channel 4 has paid for “baking powder and a tent” by failing to secure the full cohort of hosts in its take over from the BBC.
Despite this, advertisers are reported to already be queuing up for commercial tie-ups with the show, potentially going over the £10m a year TalkTalk pays to sponsor The X Factor.
“We have a number of clients hugely interested in Bake Off and I can see there being a bun fight for the prime sponsorship. It could go for as much as, or more than, X Factor, because there is a much wider, and obvious, range of potential big sponsors for a cooking show than for a general entertainment show,” a senior executive at a UK media agency told The Guardian.
The 2015 final attracted a record audience of more than 13m viewers, making it the highest rated show of the year.
Channel 4 is likely to lose a huge amount of viewers when the show moves but media industry sources believe the broadcaster can probably get the overall format to gain 3m viewers on average for the main show.
“Obviously the key variable is the audience. Losing all presenters bar Paul Hollywood is a blow. If viewing drops too far then it begins to look a much less attractive deal,” a senior media industry executive told The Guardian.
The show won’t move to Channel 4 until 2018, unless a contractual issue between its producers Love Productions and the BBC is resolved. The final episode of the seventh series is due to air on the BBC on Wednesday.