YEAR IN REVIEW

2024-25

Key Highlights .............................................................. 2

Message from the Screenrights Chair ........................... 3

Message from the Chief Executive ................................ 5

Collections and Distributions ........................................ 8

Membership ................................................................. 9

Licence Usage Data .................................................... 10

Industry Services ....................................................... 11

Expenditure ................................................................ 12

Digital Transformation ................................................ 13

Screen Industry Support ............................................. 14

CONTENTS

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

• Through our licence schemes, Screenrights distributed a record

$42.6 million to our members

• Usage of the Australian Educational Licence grew once again,

and usage records were up 32% when compared with FY24

• Growth in the Educational Licences in both Australia and

Aotearoa New Zealand continued to oﬀset the decline in

Retransmission Licence income, contributing to another

record year of $50.2 million in licence revenue

• Screenrights launched our very ﬁrst Reconciliation Action Plan

[Reﬂect RAP], committing to ﬁnding new opportunities to work

with Indigenous peoples and organisations, and to building

awareness of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures,

histories, knowledge and leadership across the organisation

• The 2024 Screenrights Cultural Fund awarded $289k to

6 initiatives fostering the creation and appreciation of screen

content in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand

Image Credits:

Queens of Concrete – Concrete Dreams

Sunflower - Pancake Originals

Our Medicine – Periscope Pictures

SCREENRIGHTS YEAR IN REVIEW 2023–2024 | 2

3 | SCREENRIGHTS YEAR IN REVIEW 2024–2025

MESSAGE FROM THE SCREENRIGHTS CHAIR

Kim Dalton Chair

In the 2024/25 ﬁnancial year, Screenrights distributed a record $42.6 million to our members. We are

proud to report another record year, but the signiﬁcance goes beyond the numbers: it demonstrates

that our members’ content continues to be highly valued by users, such as school teachers and

students who beneﬁt from our licences. This also reaﬃrms the vital role of copyright in protecting

creators and rightsholders, ensuring they are fairly compensated for the use of their work.

The success of Screenrights’ licences, like those of the

other copyright collecting societies in Australia, shows that

collective licensing can be an eﬀective way to allow content

to be used without infringing copyright, when individual

licensing is not practical. This is the approach that

Screenrights is taking, alongside the broader screen and

creative industries, in response to copyright infringement

by generative AI technology. Content used by multinational

tech companies for AI training and outputs can be licensed,

and a range of licences being negotiated around the world

demonstrates that copyright does not need to be set aside

to beneﬁt from advancements in AI.

Screenrights opposed the idea that a text and data mining

(TDM) exception was necessary for these technologies to

succeed and we are very pleased that in October the

Attorney-General deﬁnitively ruled out a TDM exception.

This is a starting point for copyright owners in Australia to

manage their copyright with AI companies. Some rightsholders

can deal with the tech companies individually but others will

not have the capacity to do so and Screenrights is ready to

support rightsholders and organisations that may not be able

to negotiate licences on their own. We will continue to advocate

for our members in this area as part of the Attorney-General’s

Another key area of advocacy for Screenrights is modernising

the Australian Educational Licence, to ensure that content

shown by broadcasters through their streaming services can

be accessed by educators without breaching copyright. We

continue to work with the Australian Government on this. We

are also working with the government in Aotearoa New Zealand,

to expand the reach of the NZ Educational Licence to progress

equitable access for students across all socio-economic

demographics.

We welcome the Attorney-General’s ongoing interest in the

outcomes of the Copyright Roundtables, and Screenrights

remains an active participant in these discussions, supporting

the need for reform. We appreciate the continued support of

our members and stakeholders as we work through these

important issues.

Kim Dalton, Screenrights Chair

29 October 2025

SCREENRIGHTS YEAR IN REVIEW 2024–2025 | 4

We are proud to report

another record year, but the

signiﬁcance goes beyond

the numbers: it demonstrates

that our members’ content

continues to be highly valued.

Image Credits:

Invisible Boys – Feisty Asphodel. Photo: David Dare Parker

Songs Inside – Songs Inside Pty Ltd

5 | SCREENRIGHTS YEAR IN REVIEW 2024–2025

While we work to grow the NZ educational licence for the mutual

beneﬁt of learners and creators, the growth in collections from

the Australian educational licence is in line with CPI. Looking

over the last few years of annual reporting since the pandemic,

we have known for some time now that the surging usage of

the licence has not slowed. Screenrights’ view is that the value

of the licence to educators in Australia is evidenced by the

extraordinary, sustained growth in usage records. With the total

collection pool remaining the same (aside from adjustments

for inﬂation), this means that the amounts paid out to individual

We feel that it’s only fair for licence fees to increase to recognise

this increase in value, and that is a discussion we’ll be having

on behalf of our members over the coming 12 months as we

renegotiate the licence.

Screenrights will always push for fair remuneration for

rightsholders alongside easy access to valuable educational

screen content for our licensees. As part of our commitment to

paying distributions to our members eﬃciently, securely, and

accurately, we continue to upgrade our internal systems and have

made further progress with our ongoing digital transformation,

equipping us to handle ever-higher volumes of data. This year

alone usage data has grown 32%. Our IT investment over the past

few years has allowed us to cope with this growth. Our systems

are better equipped now to handle the growth in data, but we still

have more work to do.

In other good news, Screenrights launched our very ﬁrst

Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) on 4 June 2025, committing to

contributing towards reconciliation wherever we can through our

business operations and extended networks. We encourage you

to read about what our Reﬂect RAP will entail over the coming

months here and we’d love to hear from you about your RAP

experiences too.

Screenrights’ 5,200+ members now represent more than 143,000

rightsholders from 73 countries. We welcome all members and

those in the broader screen industry to come and use our oﬃce

spaces in Warrang, The Rocks, when you’re in town for writers’

rooms, creative meetings, or for hotdesking.

And in FY25 we were delighted to award $289k to six fantastic

new initiatives through last year’s grant round of the Screenrights

Cultural Fund, which continues to support projects that enrich

the creation and appreciation of screen content in Australia and

Aotearoa New Zealand. Last but not least, we are again fully

compliant with the voluntary Code of Conduct for Collecting

Societies in Australia, and have met its standards in the latest

independent annual review.

You can ﬁnd more ﬁnancial detail in our Annual Report which will

be available on our website once it has been tabled in Parliament.

James Dickinson, Chief Executive

29 October 2025

MESSAGE FROM THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE

James Dickinson Chief Executive

Screenrights is proud to report a record year in licensing and distribution once again, with collections

reaching $50.2 million and distributions totaling $42.6 million in the ﬁnancial year to 30 June 2025. While

Australian retransmission licensing revenue continues to decline, as forecast, our educational licences

remain hugely valuable to teachers and students with growth in both Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

6 | SCREENRIGHTS YEAR IN REVIEW 2024–2025

As part of our commitment to

paying distributions to our

members eﬃciently, securely,

and accurately, we continue to

upgrade our internal systems

and have made further progress

with our ongoing digital

transformation, equipping us

to handle ever-higher volumes

of data.

Image Credits:

Songs Inside – Songs Inside Pty Ltd

Thou Shalt Not Steal – Ludo

Invisible Boys – Feisty Asphodel. Photo: David Dare Parker