The immersive sector is growing fast. The global market for immersive entertainment was valued at US$133.6 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach US$473.9 billion by 2030. From ABBA Voyage to teamLab Planets to Excurio's Immersive Expeditions, a new generation of location-based formats is competing directly with film, live events and museums for audience attention.
But the ecosystem that turns creative ambition into sustainable businesses and enduring IP has not kept pace. In a sector defined by new formats, evolving business models and technology still being invented in real time, the producer's role is more critical than ever — yet the training, funding structures and networks that support producers in film and television have no equivalent in immersive.
On 6 September 2026, during Venice Immersive, CIIIC convened 16 international producers, trainers and funders to identify what needs to change. The resulting report, Future-Proofing Producers: Shaping the Next Generation of Production Companies and IP (opens in new window), was written by Liz Rosenthal (Venice Immersive Curator and CEO & Founder of Power to the Pixel) and published today.
Five critical challenges
The report identifies five interconnected issues:
- A critical shortage of skilled IX producers and business leaders — a structural gap that goes beyond skills, with many festival projects produced without a distribution strategy from the outset.
- A lack of IX producer-focused training — Creative Europe's MEDIA Programme funds 39 producer-focused training programmes for film and TV, and none for immersive media.
- Insufficient support for development and scaling of IP — development funding is routinely conflated with delivery, and project-by-project financing makes it impossible to sustain a team.
- A disconnect between IX producers, distribution, venues and funding — there are almost no distribution companies brokering relationships between producers and venues; one producer had to reach out to 65 venues to show their work at 7.
- A lack of IX producer networks — unlike film, TV and performing arts, the immersive sector has no international producer guild or network through which to share knowledge, data and experience.
For each challenge, the report sets out concrete solutions: funding development as development, slate-based financing, venue-directed funding, touring infrastructure, and a genuine international producer community with the capacity to share market intelligence and case studies the way film networks already do.
Why this matters for CIIIC
The next phase of the IX sector calls for international collaboration, especially in talent development. CIIIC strengthens the Dutch IX field through research, labs, innovation and talent development, and aims to connect Dutch expertise with international partners to jointly develop programmes for education, reskilling, upskilling and talent mobility across the EU. This report is a first step in shaping those programmes together with the field.