Pay day! £100 million paid out to performers since 2017 thanks to Equity’s fight for royalties

Over £100 million of royalties have been paid to tens of thousands of performers since Equity’s in house Distribution Service was launched in 2017. These royalties, which are paid to performers on everything from Coronation Street to Skyfall to the Matilda cast album, only exist because Equity members fought hard for them to be incorporated into performers’ film and TV contracts.
 
This battle for royalties included Equity members taking industrial action in 2000 to secure ongoing payments for performers within the union’s film agreement. Until then, the film agreement was effectively a buy-out of all uses. Equity ultimately won and employers signed a new agreement that paid performers royalties and residuals – with the proviso that Equity undertake the distribution of royalty payments to performers.  

Originally administered by sister organisation British Equity Collecting Society, in 2017 Equity brought royalty distributions from its industrial agreements in-house with the creation of the Equity Distribution Services (EDS). 

Fighting for performers to get fair pay for the use of their work

Most royalties are driven by the commercial success of a film or TV production. Equity is always fighting to make sure performers get a share in that commercial success and fair and proportionate remuneration for the use of their work. We do this through bargaining with employers on behalf of all performers who are engaged on Equity contracts.  

The EDS is a crucial part of Equity’s power to negotiate lucrative collective licence agreements with broadcasters and catch-up services. The BBC, for example, agreed to a collective licence agreement for BBC iPlayer and BBC Radio 4Extra on condition that Equity handle the payments to performers. The union has gone on to strike collective agreements with ITV, Channel 4, Sky and, most recently, Channel 5.

Since late 2017, when the EDS was set up, Equity’s new media and cable collective licence agreements have:

• Generated over £37 million of additional income for artists engaged on Equity contracts. In the same period, the EDS has put over £61 million of royalties from Equity’s film and television agreements into performers' pockets.  
• Equity agreements with broadcasters, film studios and other employers have generated over £100 million of royalties for tens of thousands of performers engaged on Equity contracts.
• On top of the sums paid out by the EDS, Equity agreements are also responsible for millions of pounds of royalties paid out by broadcasters and production companies for standard secondary uses such as network repeats, programmes sales abroad and sales to digital channels.  

Paying performers for the old and new

The EDS pays artists in a huge range of productions from Eastenders and Downton Abbey to blockbusters including Skyfall and Game of Thrones to UK indie films including Lady in the Van, classic series such as Band of Brothers and radio comedy such as Hancock’s Half Hour as well as cast albums including Matilda and Les Miserables. 

The sums paid out to individuals range from a few pence to over £100,000, with most individual payments in a typical distribution payout around a few hundred pounds.  Some productions have enormous longevity and continue to generate healthy royalties well after their release dates; now 24 years old, Band of Brothers generated over £1million of royalties for the British cast last year.

Royalties for new series and productions made under Equity agreements are coming on stream all the time from both older and newer content producers. The future looks golden for performers too as Equity has agreements in place to handle royalty distributions for original productions made by the new guard of content creators - Netflix, Disney+ and Apple+.