Ireland's entertainment & media market is heading to €8.2bn — here's where we sit in it
PwC's Ireland Entertainment & Media Outlook forecasts steady growth to €8.2bn by 2030 — but digital advertising, connected TV and streaming are growing multiples faster than the market average.
What happened
PwC published its Ireland Entertainment & Media Outlook this week, forecasting steady growth for the sector out to 2030. Nothing explosive on the headline number — but underneath it, some parts of the market are growing four and five times faster than the average. Those are the parts that matter to us. Source: PwC Ireland Entertainment & Media Outlook, via adworld.ie.
The numbers
Ireland's entertainment and media market is valued at €7bn in 2025, growing to €8.2bn by 2030 — a 3.14% CAGR overall. That's the steady, unglamorous top line. The real story is in the segments pulling ahead of it.
Key details
- Digital advertising: €1.3bn in 2025 (up 13.1% year-on-year), heading to €1.9bn by 2030 — a 7.6% CAGR, more than double the market average
- Paid search: from €76m in 2025 to a projected €1bn by 2030
- Connected TV and in-stream advertising: the fastest-growing line in the whole report, at a 16.2% CAGR, reaching €46.44m by 2030
- Video-on-demand: €334m in 2025 (up 17.2%), growing to €428m by 2030, with VOD subscriptions alone climbing from €280m to €358m
- Physical experiences — cinema, live music, trade shows: €310m combined in 2025, growing to €362m by 2030, with cinema box office on a 4.4% CAGR
- Connectivity: €2.7bn in 2025, growing 2.2% annually, with 5G subscriptions nearly doubling from 6m to 11m by 2030
Why it matters
Averaged out, this looks like a mature, low-drama market. It isn't. Digital advertising, connected TV and streaming are growing multiples faster than cinema, connectivity or the market as a whole — which means the investment isn't spreading evenly across Ireland's media landscape, it's concentrating. Brands and platforms chasing that growth need production and creative partners who can already operate at the speed of digital advertising and streaming content, not ones bolting a "digital team" onto a broadcast-era structure to catch up.
Connection to Mad Bad Studios
We work across strategy, creative direction, film, motion and social activation — under one roof, in Dublin, right where this growth is concentrating. We didn't build a digital division to chase this. We were built this way from the start, which means when a brand or platform needs to move at the pace of connected TV or VOD rather than the pace of the wider market, we're already set up to do it.
Get in touch
If you're a brand or platform looking to move on Ireland's growing digital advertising and streaming opportunity, we're happy to talk it through.
Want to talk it through?