If money is the metric, M&E is near the top of the league tables. But add inherent control over all narrative, and we see all other industries bow before it.
“All the world’s a stage!” wrote Shakespeare. He wasn’t kidding.
As we complete the first quarter of the 21st century, communicating to consumers and constituents has become the central theme for nearly all 8.2 billion people on our planet.
What the study of economics tells us is that selling to consumers generates revenues. Those revenues can result in money and wealth for some. Scale that out to large populations of consumers, or even nations, and we see the socio-political theories that drive marketing and election campaigns.
Our modern world is all about the narrative.
And, today, there is only one industry that controls the dissemination of information to audiences. All audiences. No titan of industry, techno-bro or Minister can exercise the power of persuasion, at scale, without going through someone inside the Media & Entertainment industry.
“The covert dominance of Media & Entertainment becomes clear when its primary output is understood not as ‘content’ but as Narrative Capital.”
– Thomas Kingston
The Hidden Apex
One thing my work within international private equity, and as Publisher of the Media C-Suite, has revealed to me is that the global Media & Entertainment (“M&E”) complex is vastly larger, and more important, than commonly appreciated.
The reason for this under-recognition lies in classification. Scale isn’t the issue.
M&E is, more often than not, described in narrow cultural or creative terms: entertainment, art, content. The creative industries. As a result, many analysts treat it as a peripheral “service” sector rather than as a core industrial pillar.
That legacy framing has masked a deeper truth: M&E is not merely large, it is structurally central to modern economics. It is the primary channel through which information, meaning and public perception flow, shaping consumption, investor sentiment, political legitimacy and regulatory risk.
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In this article, I argue that M&E is not simply a top-tier industry; it is the true apex industry. Its overt strength is measurable in revenue; its covert strength is systemic influence. Through what I call Narrative Capital, the sector converts creative output into audience resonance, shaping the economic reality for every other industry globally, and generating revenue by doing so.
The sections that follow examine first the conventional economic metrics, then how the industry’s hidden leverage transforms those metrics into structural power.
This is what a limited number of senior industry leaders, politicians and professional investors have capitalised on well. Particularly in the last decade. It’s time everyone was in the Know.
What is M&E?
We define the Media & Entertainment industry as the complex system of creators, enterprises, rights-holders and infrastructures that originate, own, distribute and monetise intellectual property expressed as content in order to shape and monetise the attention, beliefs and behaviour of audiences.
This definition has a number of implications.
First, M&E is not simply a “content sector”; it is an industrial system governing the creation, control and commercial exploitation of common knowledge and narrative influence.
Second, it includes all economic activity where information is packaged as content and conveyed to an audience, whether entertainment, news, opinion, educational, branded or social.
At the core of M&E is the audience. It is the audience that pays for access to content with money, attention or both. Content that resonates with an audience captures attention better than content that does not. Managing that resonance cultivates consumer audiences at scale. Advertisers and brands from all other industries then pay our industry for access to those audiences.
According to PwC’s most recent Global Entertainment & Media Outlook, global M&E revenues reached roughly US$2.9 trillion in 2024 from consumer- and ad-spend. This is forecast to approach US$4 trillion by 2030.
Because the Audience is also the aggregate consumer and political body, M&E has a direct role in shaping purchasing preferences across sectors, influencing political perception and social norms and setting the boundaries of what is considered common knowledge.
Accordingly, we treat the total addressable market for M&E as the size of the global human population multiplied by the aggregate value of its attention and disposable income.
M&E’s raw material is often thought of as creativity, and in some respects it is. Our industry’s true feedstock, however, is human attention at scale.
The Big Leagues
The world’s richest person, presently Elon Musk, is expected to achieve a record net worth of US$1 trillion at some point in the near future. Our industry generates more than 3X that milestone, every year.
When we compare M&E to other economic sectors, particularly each large industrial complex, our industry is by no means the largest in terms of revenues. But do we rank in the top 10? With US$3.065 trillion in annual revenues forecast for 2025, we sure do!
This ranks M&E as the seventh largest industrial sector of the global economy by annual revenues according to figures for 2025 from industrial analytics firm Ibis World.
To put this into a more thrilling context, M&E generates in excess of 4.5X the annual revenue of the top 100 arms manufacturers and military services companies combined.
If we were a nation, unto ourselves, M&E would rank 7th in the world in GDP terms, just behind the United Kingdom and ahead of France, Italy, Brazil and Canada.
But what distinguishes M&E fundamentally is the structure of its economics.
Unlike manufacturing or commodity sectors, where revenue typically tracks linear production cycles, M&E is driven by intellectual property with compounding potential. A film, a franchise or a music catalogue created once can generate recurring income through licensing, syndication, streaming, adaptations and spin-offs, often with minimal incremental cost. In effect, successful IP behaves like a capital asset rather than a consumable good. When aggregated across the entire global M&E portfolio, the sector’s effective margin and long-term value creation capacity are materially higher than standard accounting practices reflect.
In these twin respects, scale and structural economics, M&E is not a niche creative enclave, but a first-tier global industry in its own right.
The fact that M&E is not typically included in standard macro-economic analysis demonstrates the hidden value now being exploited for financial, social and political purposes.
Stealth Economics: Why Media & Entertainment Appears Smaller Than It Is
Although Media & Entertainment ranks alongside the world’s largest industries on revenue, its true economic mass is consistently underestimated.
The first reason is definitional: most global datasets treat film, television, gaming, music, publishing, advertising, sports media and creator-led content as separate verticals. When measured independently, each appears modest. When combined into a unified sector, which reflects how consumers actually experience the attention economy, the scale should place M&E among the world’s core industrial sectors. This fragmentation masks the industry’s real standing.
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A second factor is the misclassification of M&E as a “creative” or “cultural” sector. Government and economic taxonomies routinely group it with arts, events and leisure rather than with strategic industrial categories. This pushes the sector to the periphery of economic analysis, even though it produces assets (intellectual property, distribution infrastructure, global platforms) whose economic behaviour resembles technology and capital-intensive industries.
A third distortion arises from accounting rules. Internally generated copyright material cannot be capitalised under standardised accounting practices, meaning that the creation of IP franchises, catalogues and formats is recorded as expense rather than asset formation. This suppresses the visibility of long-term value creation. If IP were treated as an appreciating capital asset, the effective gross margin profile of the sector rises significantly; in some cases rivalling high-margin technology or software businesses.
Finally, induced economic activity is rarely counted. Sponsorships, location-production multipliers, gaming-related hardware demand and global cloud-streaming infrastructure all sit outside official M&E totals, even though they are economically dependent on M&E output.
These structural blind spots collectively create a stealth profile: an industry that appears smaller than it is because its classification obscures how its value is generated.
The Covert Persuasion Engine
Economic performance is driven by behaviour, and behaviour is driven by meaning.
Meaning is created through narrative, and narrative is produced and distributed by M&E systems. The OECD highlights this dynamic explicitly, documenting how media narratives influence public attitudes on health, technology, climate and trust in institutions.
Corporations communicate value, legitimacy and risk through advertising, corporate media, documentaries, digital platforms and influencer ecosystems. Financial markets rely on interpretive media signals to manage volatility and sentiment. Even governments depend on media to explain policy. The IMF has noted the direct relationship between media framing and investor behaviour in its research publications.
Through these mechanisms, M&E does far more than produce content: it constructs the common frames of reference upon which consumer behaviour, regulatory acceptance and investor confidence depend.
No industry can operate without passing through M&E’s narrative infrastructure. That is why the sector occupies a covert position at the top of the global economic hierarchy.
Which brings us back to the audience.
Because the audience is also the global consumer and political body, M&E has a direct role in shaping purchasing preferences across all sectors, influencing political perception and social norms and defining the boundaries of common knowledge.
In essence, what M&E harnesses is the power to shape and change minds.
Narrative Capital
The covert dominance of Media & Entertainment becomes clear when its primary output is understood not as “content” but as Narrative Capital. This is the stock of influence that accumulates when stories, formats, characters, symbols and informational frames achieve audience resonance, shape behaviour and generate sustained revenues, or other outcomes, at scale.
No other industry produces this form of capital as its central economic function.
The World Economic Forum has highlighted the increasing power of narrative and cultural framing in shaping public behaviour across sectors, especially during periods of volatility and institutional distrust.
Within M&E, a narrative that gains traction is not an accessory to economic performance. It is a driver of it.
The Inversion
In most sectors, influence follows financial performance. Strong revenue creates brand value, legitimacy and political leverage. In every other industry, financial performance generates influence.
In M&E, influence generates financial performance. Audience resonance produces the economic return, not the other way around.
This inversion is the reason M&E sits at the apex of the global system. It produces the meaning that shapes the behaviour upon which all other industries depend and then M&E earns from it.
Media & Entertainment is the only global industry whose output reshapes the interpretive environment of every other industry. It produces meaning. Meaning drives behaviour. Behaviour determines economic performance.
Narrative Capital is therefore not a cultural phenomenon. It is the mechanism that explains why M&E sits at the apex of the global industrial system.
Dependency
The core argument of this article is structural: every major industry operates downstream from Media & Entertainment.
This dependency is not cultural or symbolic. It is intrinsic to human behaviour and universal across our entire population. Revenue, legitimacy, social cohesion, regulatory stability and market valuation across all boundaries depend on the narratives that M&E systems distribute and amplify.
This is the primary attraction for the ambitious. From professional investors seeking financial performance, to the careers of media executives and entrepreneurs and even for those seeking political and social positioning, no other industry offers M&E’s unfair advantage.
Dependency on Media for Revenue
Consumer demand is shaped by meaning, not production. Meaning is transmitted through narrative content. Global advertising spend, US$963 billion in 2024 according to WPP Media, exists precisely because industries cannot shape consumer behaviour without narrative framing. It’s simply the way the human mind, and social engineering at scale, works.
Automotive, food and beverage, technology, consumer finance, travel, apparel and pharmaceuticals all rely on media channels to construct brand value, differentiate products and stabilise trust. Without purposeful narrative, demand collapses to the bare minimum of functional consumption.
Dependency on Media for Political and Regulatory Outcomes
Political and regulatory exposure in the twenty-first century is the direct result of purposeful narrative. Public opinion shapes public behaviour, and public opinion is formed through the narrative devices of M&E. Independent research shows that effective policymaking depends on citizen trust and perceptions of issues, while communication studies demonstrate that media framing is a primary driver of those perceptions. Trust in government and trust in media move in lock-step, influencing regulatory expectations across sectors.
Political legitimacy therefore depends on the same M&E systems that shape consumer markets.
Dependency on Media for Market Valuation
Financial markets behave as narrative systems. Investor sentiment responds to interpretation, not information alone. Empirical research from Columbia University demonstrates that the tone and volume of news coverage predict stock returns and trading patterns, indicating that media framing and consumer sentiment materially influence price tolerance.
Earnings results, CEO messaging, macroeconomic narratives and crisis events achieve financial meaning only after they pass through the narrative devices of M&E.
Structural Subordination
Other industries produce goods, services and infrastructure. Media & Entertainment produces the meaning that determines whether those goods are met with consumer demand, whether those services are trusted and whether that infrastructure is embraced or rejected.
Consumer behaviour drives economics. M&E drives consumer behaviour.
From this perspective, every other economic sector sits downstream from the Narrative Capital created by Media & Entertainment.
The Rise of Intentional Narrative Power
For most of its history, Media & Entertainment has exercised influence without acknowledging it. The sector continues to embrace its description as cultural, artistic or creative; its Narrative Capital has accumulated as a by-product of mass communication, not as a strategic objective.
Over the past decade, however, this has changed. M&E now operates with clear acknowledgement that narrative is a form of power, and that shaping common knowledge is a lever with economic and political consequences.
The Inflection Point
The unprecedented open exposure provided by the global internet has elevated nearly 70% of our total population (that’s ~6 billion consumers) into the marketplace of ideas. Social media platforms, content sharing sites and direct to consumer channels demonstrate that the opportunity for purposefully directed narrative has never been more abundant.
Three developments mark the shift from accidental to intentional accumulation of Narrative Capital.
First, distribution has consolidated. Streaming platforms, global news ecosystems and social-media networks now reach billions daily, creating centralised narrative infrastructure. According to Statista, global video-streaming penetration surpassed 65 percent of internet users in 2024, giving these platforms unprecedented control over cultural and informational flow to rival the mass-communication mechanisms of highly-regulated broadcast radio and television networks.
Second, franchise economics have matured. The success of cinematic universes, multi-platform story worlds and global game IP demonstrates that narrative can be engineered, extended and monetised as a long-cycle capital asset. The very same concept of franchise value made so lucrative as an asset by Warren Buffett is inherent in the brand-ability of both story and story-teller.
Third, the rise of polarised information environments has heightened the political and economic importance of narrative framing. Research from the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center documents the increasing impact of narrative ecosystems on public opinion and institutional trust.
Platforms and Studios: A Dual System of Influence
Platforms control distribution architecture: reach, visibility, algorithmic priority. Creatives, producers and publishers control interpretive meaning: characters, story worlds, frames of understanding. Together they form a dual system that governs which narratives succeed and how they shape perception.
Strategic Intent Emerges
Major M&E firms now explicitly manage narrative portfolios, franchise coherence, brand-story integration and long-horizon audience development. Brands partner with content producers to embed themselves inside narrative, not adjacent to it. Creatives increasingly shape sentiment directly, with platforms amplifying their reach.
Why Intentional Narrative Power Confirms the Apex Position
When an industry becomes conscious of its leverage and designs systems to optimise it, its functional power changes. Media & Entertainment now engineers the interpretive environment through which all other industries must operate. This intentionality confirms its structural position at the top of the global industrial hierarchy.
The Apex Industry, Hidden in Plain Sight
Media & Entertainment stands visibly among the world’s largest industries by annual revenue, but it’s true position is obscured by outdated economic classification.
Our deeper analysis shows that these legacy classifications understate reality and obscure an economic hierarchy in which all other economic sectors rely on M&E for survival.
Narrative Capital explains why this dependency elevates M&E to the apex of the industrial hierarchy. It is the only sector that produces the meaning upon which all other sectors rely for capital performance. Consumer behaviour drives economics; narrative drives consumer behaviour; Media & Entertainment is the singular source of narrative content to all consumers.
Until economic frameworks evolve to capture this reality, the sector’s central role will remain hidden in plain sight, despite shaping the global system more profoundly than any other industry. That makes M&E one of today’s most potent unkept secrets. A secret that plenty of creatives, executives and investors are actively exploiting from every corner of the world.
That gives a new spin on the old concept of being a Hollywood Insider.
From our perspective inside the Media C-Suite, it’s good to be in the Know!
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Thomas is our founder, acting Publisher and contributes an outsized proportion of our articles and editorial pieces.
He is an American lawyer & private equity specialist with 30+ years of international experience in investment strategy. He has lived and worked in London, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Nicosia as both adviser and executive to several of the world’s largest family offices, institutional investors and State-investment companies. He is also founder of Coherent Media Group, a corporate holding company dedicated to media & entertainment businesses globally.
In his spare time, Thomas is a corporate and political speech-writer and has ghost-written numerous Op-Eds, political/espionage thrillers and science fiction novels.
