Licence fee and funding

Funding through the TV licence

A standard TV licence is currently £169.50

Your TV Licence lets you enjoy a huge range of TV. It covers you for:

• All TV channels, like BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Dave and international channels
• Pay TV services, like Sky, Virgin Media and BT
• Live TV on streaming services, like YouTube and Amazon Prime Video
• Everything on BBC iPlayer

This includes recording and downloading. On any device, including a TV, laptop, tablet or phone

What the licence fee pays for

Funding from the licence fee allows the BBC to provide an unparalleled range of programmes and services across TV, radio and online. More information about the breadth of content the BBC produces can be found here: https://www.bbc.com/aboutthebbc/whatwedo/publicservices/

In addition to funding programmes and services, a proportion of the licence fee funds the BBC World Service broadcasting in 42 languages including English globally, as well as funding the Welsh Language TV channel S4C and Local Democracy Reporters. 

The licence fee allows the BBC's UK services to remain free of advertisements and independent of shareholder and political interest.

Commercial income

The licence fee is supplemented by income from the activities of our commercial subsidiaries - BBC Studios and BBC Studioworks.

Ensuring value for money

The BBC is focussed on delivering value for all audiences. In a world of rapidly increasing choice the BBC continues to reach 90% of UK adults on average each week, rising to 97% over a month, and is the nation’s number one media brand.

• Reduction in overheads
  Overheads remain at industry-leading levels, at only 5% of our total costs, with 95% directed to audience-facing content and services

• UK economy
  The BBC has wide ranging impacts on the UK economy. For every £1 of the BBC’s economic activity, £2.63 is generated in the economy.

• Commercial income
  £1,384 million in 2021/22.

• Culminative savings
  £1 billion worth of savings delivered since 2016/17.

In 2021/22 this is how your monthly licence fee was spent: