Full Year 2023 Media & Marketing Industry Trends

2023 KEY HIGHLIGHTS

The Ultimate Fighting Championship’s merger with World Wrestling Entertainment was the largest Media & Marketing transaction in 2023, with a price of $9.3 billion.

There were 164 financially sponsored transactions with an aggregate value of $9.24 billion, representing 17 percent of the total volume and 22 percent of the total value, respectively.

2023 KEY TRENDS

Total transaction volume in 2023 fell by 14 percent over 2022, from 1,217 to 1,042.

The segment with the largest transaction volume in 2023 was Marketing with 435 transactions.

Total transaction value in 2023 decreased by 72 percent over 2022, from $150 billion to $42 billion.

The median EBITDA multiple declined from 11.4x in 2022 to 8.5x in 2023. The median revenue multiple decreased from 2.6x in 2022 to 1.7x in 2023.

Notable growth sectors on an annual basis included Exhibitions, Conferences, & Events, which saw M&A activity increase from 56 transactions in 2022 to 67 transactions in 2023.

M&A MARKET OVERVIEW

Berkery Noyes tracked 3,313 Media & Marketing transactions between 2021 and 2023, of which 631 disclosed financial terms, and calculated the aggregate value to be $350.1 billion. Based on known transaction values, we project values of 2,682 undisclosed transactions to be $47.67 billion, totaling $397.73 billion worth of transactions tracked over the past three years.

Disclosed median enterprise value multiples for all segments combined in this report during the last 36 months were 2.5x revenue and 10.8x EBITDA.

Over the past three years, deals in the $10-$20 million range received a median enterprise value multiple of 2.1x revenue, compared to 4.6x revenue for those in the $160 million and above range.