The gloves are well and truly off in the first major skirmish between organisations vying to control large proportions of UK entertainment and media spend in the web 2.0 era. In the blue corner, the heavyweight Sky Movies, with first pay TV window[1] deals with each of the six major studios[2]. And up until recently, standing proudly alone in the red corner, the relative newcomer backed by dot.com giant Amazon, Lovefilm. But 2012 has seen another contender sidle into the red corner, and with the arrival of Netflix in Europe – first stop, UK & Ireland – a previously predictable contest, a slugfest between Sky Movies and Lovefilm, is starting to hot up. The gloves are off, but what happens next?

As UK based independent television producers continue to find themselves the targets of mergers and acquisitions, the metric with which their success is judged becomes ever more important. Production companies have tended to be assessed by the size of their turnover and profits. O&O has developed an alternative, a five part scorecard for all leading UK production groups measuring: refreshment, stickiness, longevity, stability and transferability. These yield a very different ranking from those based on turnover and profitability. Can you guess which production group comes top?