Winners Announced at the 2017 BASE Awards
June 9, 2017
The winners of the 2017 British Association for Screen Entertainment (BASE) Awards were announced last night, during a ceremony hosted by broadcaster and film aficionado, Claudia Winkleman at Tobacco Dock in London.
The BASE Awards exist to shine a light on innovation and achievement in the video sector celebrating the very best from distribution and retail, and act as a benchmark for excellence across the video industry.
The event was attended by close to a 1,000 video industry representatives and included leaders from major and independent distributors, retailers, media owners and agencies.
Universal Pictures UK, The Walt Disney Company, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment UK, Entertainment One, Sky Store and HMV all walked away with multiple awards, with HMV winning retail store of the year for the fifth year running.
Awards were also won by, BBC Worldwide, Arrow Films, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment UK, Tesco UK, Amazon.co.uk and creative agency Once Upon a Time.
Universal Pictures UK won Distributor of the Year after securing 18.5% market share of the retail disc market by value¹. The distributor also won four additional awards, including Campaign of the Year for Special Interest for Romesh Ranganathan: Irrational Live and Campaign of the Year for Film – Non-theatrical for darts documentary House of Flying Arrows.
Title of the year went to the unmissable Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The Walt Disney Company delighted a new generation of Star Wars fans with a film that also won the support of the franchise faithful. The distributor made the movie’s home entertainment arrival on 18th April feel like a landmark event, and it resulted in more than one million DVD and Blu-rays being sold in the film’s first week on sale, some 61% of its 2016 sales total. By the end of the year Star Wars: The Force Awakens had sold 2.05m copies on disc, with a retail sales value of £24.8m.
With the ongoing development and evolution in the flow of digital data we look forward to be incorporating digital figures into the Distributor and Title of the Year in future Awards.
Entertainment One celebrated winning two awards last night, taking home the Campaign of the Year for Children for the charming animated title Stick Man. They also took home the award for Campaign of the Year for Film – up to £1million Box Office with Oasis documentary Supersonic.
The beautifully shot, Planet Earth II secured the Campaign of the Year for TV award for BBC Worldwide. While the iconic Donnie Darko made a return to secure Campaign of the Year for Catalogue Single Product for Arrow Films.
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment took away the award for Campaign of the Year for Catalogue Multiple Product with the iconic Criterion Collection. Sony was also the winner of the inaugural Outstanding Innovation Award for its Affinity Ranging Solution. Sony took the product recommendation idea so successfully used by digital platforms, and incorporated it in a bricks-and-mortar environment. Stores with the Affinity Ranging Solution have seen sales value uplifts of up to 25%.
The Affinity Ranging Solution really is something that could change the way products are sold in-store, and has the potential to lead to a significant increase in impulse purchases of catalogue product.
The Outstanding Innovation Award was this year introduced into the BASE stable to recognise and showcase everyday innovation, highlighting initiatives that are already thriving, as well as demonstrating worth and could be scaled to benefit the broader category. Other entries in this category included, Big Sleeve Edition from The Walt Disney Company, The Official Film Download Chart from The Official Charts Company and Making DVD Special Again from Universal Pictures UK.
Retailers HMV and Sky Store were both extremely successful winning two awards each. Sky Store took away the Digital Retailer Initiative of the Year for its Christmas Voucher initiative and Digital Retailer of the Year. HMV was once again the Retail Store of the Year and also won the Physical Retailer of the Year Initiative for the HMV Hollywood Classics Range.
Liz Bales, Chief Executive, BASE, said: “The BASE Awards has once again been a fantastic success, we are very proud to be able to shine a light on the category and highlight the innovations and achievements generated by such highly skilled and talented teams and individuals. The category is continuously generating fresh and engaging content and campaigns to satisfy UK audiences and it’s vital that this work is recognised and celebrated. Congratulations to all the nominees and the winners.”
The Awards were generously sponsored by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Bauer Media, Case Station, Creative Partnership, Creo, Delga Press, The Engine House Media Services, eXPD8, Handle Recruitment, Lionsgate UK, Maverick Media, My Film Club, Obviously Creative, The Official Charts Company, Once Upon A Time, Premier, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Strike Media, STUDIOCANAL, Technicolor, Universal Pictures UK, VDC Group, Visual Data, The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group and West10.
The 2017 BASE Awards raised in excess of £6,500 for charity partner Action for Children.