Capturing the Full Value of Screen and Digital Content Investment in Wales

Wavehill
2 days ago
2 min read

Assessing the value of public investment in the screen and digital sector requires more than counting jobs created or production spend. While headline economic figures are important, they only tell part of the story. Public funding often generates broader, longer-lasting impacts that standard impact assessments rarely quantify. Our recent impact assessment of the Welsh Government’s Creative Wales Production Funding programme (covering 2020/21 to 2024/25) set out to address this gap.

The programme invested nearly £24 million in 45 screen and digital productions filmed in Wales, including His Dark Materials (Series 3), Sex Education (Series 3 and 4), and House of the Dragon (Series 2). This investment leveraged an additional £263.9 million in production expenditure.

To understand the full footprint of this funding, we worked with Creative Wales and industry stakeholders to develop a comprehensive Theory of Change, mapping the wider economic, social, cultural, and environmental outcomes the programme sought to support.

Click this link to read a plain text version of the Theory of Change diagram below

This image presents a structured Theory of Change (ToC) for the Creative Wales Production Funding programme. It visually sets out the causal logic from initial inputs through to longer-term impacts, arranged in five columns from left to right: Inputs, Activities, Outputs, Outcomes, and Impacts.

We then built a bespoke economic model using the 2019 Welsh Input-Output tables, the first official tables for Wales since 2007. Due to previous data limitations, earlier assessments in Wales typically relied on UK or Scottish multipliers. By applying Wales-specific data, we generated more accurate and locally grounded estimates of impact.

Standard Economic Impact

Our modelling found that production activity, including direct spend, supply chain effects, and induced expenditure, generated £177.8 million in gross value added (GVA) and 2,840 full-time equivalent jobs in Wales

Quantifying Wider Spillover Effects

We also monetised a series of wider impacts that are often acknowledged in screen-sector policy but rarely quantified:

Screen-induced tourism was estimated to contribute between £45.3 million and £226.4 million in GVA, supporting up to 5,570 job years.
Studio investment, supported indirectly through the programme by de-risking private capital and expanding regional production capacity, contributed £1.9 million in GVA and 41 job-years.
Exhibition and festivals, including production-related cinema trips and events such as the Iris Prize and Wales Screen Summit, contributed £1.9 million in GVA and 51 job-years.
Education and skills development, through training and placements linked to production activity, contributed £0.8 million in GVA and 15 job-years.

Why It Matters

At a time of increasing scrutiny over public spending, this analysis provides robust evidence that targeted investment in screen and digital content delivers economic returns that extend beyond immediate production activity, strengthening supply chains, generating tourism spend, supporting infrastructure, and increasing tax revenues.

If you would like to read the full report or speak to our team about impact assessments, please contact Michael Pang.

Click here to read a plain text version of the infographic below

The infographic summarises the key findings from Wavehill’s impact assessment of Creative Wales’ production funding. It is structured into several sections with green and white boxes, icons, and large headline figures.