Broadcast AV fuels Pro AV bonanza

Streaming Media

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The global market for Pro AV is tracking double that of global GDP at a rate of 5.4% versus 2.7% over each of the next 5 years, according to industry body AVIXA, which identifies networked video content production as fuelling demand.

The total market for Pro AV is estimated at $346bn worldwide in 2025, up from $325bn in 2024, with an expanding and diverse range of industries seeking AV solutions.

That’s clear on the ground at the annual ISE trade show which has expanded its own exhibition footprint and is expected to receive around 80,000 visitors this week.

Unveiling fresh data at the show, co-organizer AVIXA pointed to the rise of ‘Broadcast AV’ and the related boom of the ‘experience economy’ as some of the most significant factors impacting this burgeoning side of the business.

Broadcast AV is a category of media tech products and services intended for use outside of the traditional professional broadcast market. The standardization of video distribution over IP, the democratization of kit from cameras to vision mixers and the softwarification of my traditional hardware-based tools processed the cloud have levelled the gap between use in television and by corporates, education facilities or government.

“Technology implementation is a core engine of growth for many markets,” said Sean Wargo, VP Market Intelligence, AVIXA. “This is a similar to other tech sectors but unlike, say, I.T, Pro AV is as much art as science.”

This is where AV manufacturers, integrators and solutions providers can score, he said, “by translating [their expertise] into profit margin.”

Pro AV technology has become a crucial component of adaptation out of the pandemic for a cross-section of industries which is why it is witnessing a larger than GDP growth rate.

The experience economy is back

AVIXA gave two examples of that evolution. One is the trend towards hybrid office space where companies are implementing collaborative technology to account for the changing nature of the workforce.

The other is the ‘experience economy’ which is a catch-all for entertainment and live events in which audience members are increasingly a participant.

“It was a key driver of growth pre-pandemic, then slowed massively when we couldn’t leave our homes, and now it is back in spades,” Wargo said. “We are seeing acceleration and lots of investment. Consumers are out there spending; they're going to concerts. You could say that this has kicked off an arms race among [those staging] experiences to differentiate themselves and attract audiences.”

This is reflected in the types of equipment that AV buyers are investing in. Per AVIXA polls of AV users, 29% of those running venues plan to invest in or upgrade their content production facilities, 31% of corporate businesses will do the same and the figure for retail is 31%.

The latter is eye-opening. “It tells us the story of how content is extending beyond just the performance on premise,” Wargo said. “Retailers are investing in Broadcast AV to engage consumers with content. Now it is less ‘how do I get customers to the shop floor?’ and more ‘how do I engage them on social media and other platforms?”

There are very places out of home now where we don’t expect to find digital signage feeding us infotainment. Where a lot of this used to be outsourced, now businesses from education to hospitality even fire departments need video to communicate and are doing so using managed (cloud) services.  “It's no longer enough just to hang the display,” Wargo said. “Now, you have to provide the content to feed it.”

The profile of the AV buyer is shifting too

Keeping in mind that the average growth rate for Pro AV is 5.4% CAGR until 2029 it’s interesting to look at which verticals are predicted for higher or lower growth.

Corporate, the largest single market for Pro AV is valued this year at $71.8bn but with growth forecasts of just 4.9%. “It’s still the largest market and will likely stay there due to investments in hybrid office facilities such as video collaboration tools,” said Wargo, “But media & entertainment is where we see the impact of the democratization of production.”

M&E is already a $53.9bn segment of Pro AV growing at 6.1%. Venues and events is valued at $42.1bn with a growth of 6.3%. Retail, worth $22.3bn today, is also supercharged with a 5.9% growth.

“Technology solutions show a shift to experiences,” Wargo said. “Conferencing (growing at 4.5%) and learning (3.8%) are in slower replacement cycles but the experience economy is where the buyers are.

AVIXA stated that Broadcast AV is growing at 5.6% a year, tech in Performance and Entertainment at 6% and live events at 6.7% a year. Clearly all three are adjacent and increasingly overlap.

“Broadcast AV is a very meaningful area of investment for many of our markets. It cuts across many different solution areas and covers both fixed install entertainment systems and temporary pop-ups for live events.”

Another significant area of growth identified by AVIXA is cloud and managed services. These two go hand in glove and the business potential is to bring video content production, management and distribution outside of its silo and into a broader AV over IP network.

AVoIP standardisation is deemed essential, yet the lack of unification is leading to a fragmented landscape, with different standards like SDVoE, HDBaseT, NDI and IPMX each finding their niche. The latter two are protocols with which broadcast users will be most familiar. The standout difference is that NDI uses a compression scheme designed to maximise efficiency over a 1G network while IPMX is an adaptation of SMPTE standard 2110 and uses 10G and 25G networks to carry higher bitrates.

“Cloud and managed AV over IP services  is where a lot of growth is going to come from. It’s a great story for integration in a lot of ways because that's the bread and butter of AV. It's where the margins story. But it's also challenging in terms of competency.”

A $346 billion market cap is pocket money compared to the trillion dollar value of consumer electronics or the five trillion dollar value of I.T. but the AV industry knows it has room to grow.

“We're a more of a cottage industry with lots of underlying opportunities to expand,” Wargo said. “The market challenges are shifting from supply issues during the pandemic to labour contraints similar to pre-pandemic.”