As the Western European t-commerce sector (TV shopping, direct response TV and transactional interactive TV) takes hold , the UK is emerging as the leading player.
A new report from Screen Digest and Goldmedia forecasts that total spending in this market will reach 5.2 billion in 2004, with the UK accounting for almost half of the European total (48%).
Key to UK’s dominance of this sector is the high number of digital TV housholds and the large number of set top boxes with return paths. There are currently around 40 TV channels generated for shopping, bidding and gambling on British TV and during 2003 these channels generated revenues of £1.5 billion. This figure is predicted to rise to £2.5 billion by year-end 2008.
Besides the classical TV shopping model pioneered by QVC, there are now TV channels dedicated to live auctions such as ‘Bid-up.tv’ and ‘Auction World’.
TV-based betting and gambling applications have experienced a boom over the last two years and traditional TV shopping channels also benefit from interactivity – QVC UK already receives 35% of its orders via the red interactive button on the remote control.
The only other European country to record t-commerce revenue in excess of 1 billion is Germany, accounting for 29% of the market total. Screen Digest and Goldmedia claim that while the main obstacle to growth in Europe appears to be under-developed or missing infrastructure,the regulation of advertising and/or TV shopping is another limiting factor in some countries.
