Exclusive: ‘The Traitors’ named fastest-growing format of 2022, while ‘Masked Singer’ remains best-selling

The Traitors

The Masked Singer has held on to its crown as the world’s best-selling format for a fourth consecutive year, while The Traitors was named the ‘fastest-moving’ title, according to K7 Media’s Tracking The Giants report.

The annual report on the top 100 travelling unscripted TV formats found that The Traitors has demonstrated exponential year-on-year growth, which placed it as the second-most top selling title in 2022.

Created by All3Media’s IDTV in The Netherlands and originally launching in March 2021 on RTL 4, the format jumped from just one new international adaptation in December 2021, in Belgium, to a further seven new launches in 2022, including Peacock in the US, BBC One in the UK and Network 10 in Australia.

The Masked Singer, meanwhile, held on to its lead with nine new launches last year. The musical entertainment format from South Korea, which is distributed by MBC & Fremantle, travelled territories including Fox in Turkey, RTL in Croatia, Skai in Greece and TV in Poland.

In joint third place with six sales apiece last year were Banijay’s The Bridge and All3Media’s Sort Your Life Out, while Red Arrow Studios International’s Married At First Sight and Banijay’s MasterChef both secured five new launches.

The Masked Singer, which launched in 2015, also has the most active format adaptations around the globe, with 40 versions currently running, followed by fellow Fremantle-distributed titles Got Talent and Family Feud, with 35 and 31, respectively.

In the report, K7 Media highlighted that formats created within the past two years have seen rising sales, with an increase from 24% in 2021 to 38% in 2022, including titles such as BBC Studios’ The 1% Club and Be-Entertainment’s Finder$ Keeper$.

There has also been a corresponding reduction in the number of format revivals, which have fallen from 10% in 2021 to 7% in 2022.

K7 Media suggests that this could well mean that the boom in format reboots has hit a post-pandemic peak and that broadcasters are increasingly taking more risks in searching out original and unique programme ideas.