GB News losses surge after spending spree on high-profile presenters

The broadcaster said it had made losses of £42.4m

Last year GB News got £41m from the parent company, taking the total it now owes it to £83.8m (PA)

GB News’s losses ballooned by nearly 40 per cent last year as its owners continued to pour millions of pounds into the broadcaster.

The company said that its audience figures had ballooned, especially online where page fields increased more than fivefold.

GB News said that its pre-tax loss had gone from £30.7m in the year to the end of May 2022, to £42.4m a year later.

Despite almost doubling, the company’s revenue was still considerably lower than its losses, reaching £6.7m.

It was money from the company’s owner, All Perspectives Ltd backed by, among others, hedge fund millionaire Sir Paul Marshall.

Last year GB News got £41m from the parent company, taking the total it now owes it to £83.8m.

“The company has strong support from its investors and the directors have no reason to believe that the level of these contributions might vary to a significant degree or be recalled before the group has the resources to repay the investment,” GB News said in accounts filed to Companies House.

The company said that its audience figures had ballooned, especially online where page fields increased more than fivefold (GB News)

The business said that it had an average of 295 monthly employees during the year, with its wage, social security and pension costs reaching £21.2m, or around £72,000 per head.

The business, which said it committed to “promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace”, had employed an average of 175 people a year earlier.

The business said that it reached an average of 2.7 million viewers per month in the year ending May 2023, up 17.8 per cent on the year before. Its average share of linear TV was 0.45 per cent, up from 0.3 per cent a year earlier. It cited viewing figures from Barb Audiences.

In the company’s digital presence, page views rose 431 per cent to 51.9 million, GB News said.

The company made £5.4m of its revenue from the UK, while £1.3m of it came from the rest of the world. Ad revenue rose 41.4 per cent to £4.2m, with digital revenue increasing around fourfold to £2.2m.