This is the second of a series of articles that discuss select findings from Devoncroft’s 2025 Big Broadcast Survey (BBS), the largest annual global study of media technology industry trends, technology purchasing plans, and benchmarking of technology vendor brands.
This builds on the earlier post publishing the 2025 BBS Global Trend Index. The Index is a ranking of the importance of industry trends (to commercial success) by buyers, users, and specifiers of technology in the global media industry.
Coming in at the 20th ranking (of 22 trends) is ‘Sustainability / Carbon Reduction.’ To grind the point home, the trends of lowest importance are lowest in the rankings – ergo.
When the microphone is hot at industry panel sessions, media technology buyers dutifully answer in the affirmative about the importance of sustainability to technology deployment decisions. Sustainability considerations are now standard fare in technology vendors product marketing efforts and sustainability achievements are highlighted in supplier case studies.
And yet ‘Sustainability / Carbon Reduction’ ranked third to last in terms of importance to the future commercial success of global media technology buyers. The 20th ranking compares to a ranking of 19th in 2024 and 18th in 2023.
The statement isn’t sustainability isn’t important to you or sustainability shouldn’t be viewed as important. Rather, when answered within the safety of anonymity and asked in a framing of impact on commercial success, sustainability is not viewed as an important trend in the global media technology industry.
There is more evidence supporting this observation.
Technology vendors have learned opinions about the matters used by their customers to evaluate and select technology providers. Vendor respondents to the 2025 Big Broadcast Survey were asked how their customers’ approach to sustainability was impacting technology sourcing. The chart below visualizes the responses. There is a clear theme.
70% of technology vendors believe their customers’ approach to sustainability has no impact on their technology sourcing plans. Fewer than 10% believe their customers prioritize technology deployment decisions based on the sustainability of suppliers. In other words, from the perspective of the seller, buyers are not considering matters of sustainability in the technology procurement process.
Certain readers may observe the above was presented by an American, like an American. A fair point, leading to the reveal of the considerable variation observed across geographies. ‘Sustainability / Carbon Reduction’ is held in much higher regard by technology buyers in Western Europe than other regions.
The chart below visualizes the weighted trend importance values for ‘Sustainability / Carbon Reduction’ across regions. Compared to North American respondents, Western European technology buyers assign a nearly fourfold higher level of importance to the trend.
The above serves as a good reminder of how perspectives vary widely across geographies (and also across the value chain, organization types, and roles). However, do not misread the above. The observation is sustainability is far more important to technology buyers in Western Europe, not that sustainability is the top trend in Western Europe. It ranks #12 among buyers in the region – meaningfully higher but still outside the top ten.
The media technology industry will descend into Amsterdam next month. While those industry participants intending to focus a significant share of their energies on matters of sustainability are comparatively in friendly confines, even in Western Europe, much work remains to increase the industry’s attention.
The information in this article is based on select findings from the 2025 Big Broadcast Survey (BBS), a global study of media technology industry trends, technology purchasing plans, and benchmarking of technology vendor brands. Several thousand media professionals in 100+ countries took part in the 2025 BBS, making it the largest and most comprehensive market study ever conducted in the broadcast and media industry. The BBS is published annually by Devoncroft Partners.
Granular analysis of these results is available as part of various paid-for reports based on the 2025 BBS data set. For more information about this report, please contact Devoncroft Partners.
Related Content:
2025 Big Broadcast Survey Reports Now Available
2025 Rankings of Most Important Commercial Trends in Global Media Technology Sector
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