2021 - a successful year despite COVID-19: GVL pays out more than ever before

“We had scheduled more distributions than ever for 2021”, GVL Managing Directors Guido Evers and Tilo Gerlach explain.  “From the first day of the year, we put every effort into meet-ing these ambitious distribution schedules. Especially these days full of uncertainty for crea-tives and their partners, we placed our priority on paying out as much as possible to our rights holders. As a result, we managed to surpass the peak value of the previous year by another EUR 45m.”

In total, GVL distributed EUR 337m to its rights holders spread across 15 distribution runs in the past year; add to that the quarterly payouts of forwarded foreign revenues. Just to com-pare: In 2020, about EUR 292m were paid to producers whereas the remuneration was at EUR 219m in 2019. 

At the same time, the number of the rights holders participating in the distributions has contin-ued to rise. As such, more than 142,000 performers received remuneration in the final distribu-tion 2016 from GVL. This is not least due to the fact that the creatives are more active when it comes to registering their contributions to productions.

Against the background of record payouts, GVL managed to reduce its reserves and liabilities 2021 by more than EUR 100m, for a second year in a row.

Looking at the income situation in 2021, the GVL Managing Directors point out: “Even if the balance sheet is only prepared as we speak, we were able to take a first positive glimpse: De-spite the effects of the pandemic on the creative industries, we expect stable results for 2021 overall.” The final figures for the financial year 2021 will be published in the annual accounts in the early summer and form the basis of the initial distributions in the third quarter.”