It looks like Chicago/Illinois’ spot production market is vastly bigger than has been officially reported in the past, according to AICP’s just-released 13th annual Survey of the Commercial Production Industry activity in 2014.
AICP’s market research shows Illinois earned $142,819,368 from commercial production expenditures in 2014, thus placing third behind California and New York/New England.
Illinois’ share of commercial shoot days almost doubled to 7% since 2010, while production activity remained stable across most geographic regions, the survey concludes.
Total commercials expenditures had increased by a whopping 14% to $4 billion, with live action production accounting for 95% of the expenditures.
The LA-based Bovitz survey gauges the economic impact of commercial production as reported by national AICP’s 550 membership; 350 general and 200 associate (vendor) members.
Of this number, AICP/Midwest’s chapter has 22 general and 11 associate members, most of them Chicago-based companies.
“Chicago is no longer an undiscovered gem,” comments STORY’s Mark Androw, president of AICP/Midwest and a founder of national AICP, of the new stats. “With our tax credits and talent pool, we are known to national advertisers and agencies throughout the country as the destination for great production at lower costs.”
Read the entire AICP survey here.
Commercial revenues could be vastly higher than reported
Illinois’ $143 million from commercials is a staggering 240% increase from the $60 million reported by the Illinois Dept. of Commerce and Economic Opportunity in 2013, the last year it issued a film industry round-up.
But commercials income could be as high as $175 million, comments Wayne Kubacki, VP/Illinois Production Alliance, because the AICP report is confined to members’ activities while non-members’ work goes unreported and unquantified.
Commercial business could be valued even higher when other categories are included in the tally. Optimus’ Tom Duff, president of AICE/Chicago and past international president, estimates $100 million was generated by postproduction expenditures in 2014, for a total of $275 million.
Total film market could be an estimated $633 million
The total state media and entertainment market could be as big as $633 million when DCEO’s 2013 reported $300 million from entertainment projects is combined with 2014’s estimated $275 million from commercials.
Kubacki points out, however, that DCEO is confined to reporting on projects that provided a final submission of production figures to be awarded the actual tax credit. But those figures can lag for as long as three years after the project was shot.
DCEO does not include in its report expenses that do not qualify for the tax incentives, such as corporate videos for the web, low budget indie films, gaming and certain TV shows.
Nonetheless, Illinois is definitely positioned in the upper tier of film states for the first time in 35 years.
Given the explosive growth of content creation and distribution, the state’s status has no place to go but up.
