COURSE OVERVIEW
Learn practical business skills to progress in the screen and interactive media industries.
This six-month course will teach you the business side of the film, TV and games industries, enabling you to advance your career - whether that’s within an organisation, or starting and growing your own company.
This hybrid, part time course is designed to offer flexibility where you can work alongside study.
Content Tabs
The media industry is changing fast. Understanding how it works behind the scenes is essential for anyone looking to build a new business or to grow their career towards the executive level within an existing company. This course teaches you how the business actually runs: how decisions get made, how projects are financed, and how creative ideas become profitable enterprises.
You'll gain structured, practical knowledge to help you navigate each part of the industry value chain and build the financial, legal, and strategic skills needed to grow your impact over time.
You'll learn from producers, studio executives, investors, lawyers, and entrepreneurs with experience across film, TV, games, and digital platforms. They'll share how businesses really work and the things they wish they'd known when they started out.
The course is built to fit around your working life, with:
- 3 in-person summits (2 days each) to build your network, pitching and presentation skills
- 16 weekly online seminars with industry guests and specialist tutors
- 4 one-to-one tutorials tailored to your goals
- 4 optional deep-dive sessions on specialist or emerging topics
Summits take place at the NFTS campus in Soho, placing you in the heart of London's creative economy with access to top-tier industry networks. By the end of the course, you'll have produced either a polished business plan and investor ready pitch deck for a creative venture of your own, or a strategic business report proposing a new direction or opportunity within your organisation.
You'll build up practical, transferable knowledge across every stage of the film, TV, games, and digital media value chain to transform ideas into valuable intellectual property. This includes:
- Strategic foundations and Industry value chains: Map how film, TV, and games transform ideas into profitable enterprises, understanding key players and decision points from development to distribution.
- Content development and IP creation: Understand how film, TV, and game concepts become valuable intellectual property, learning to assess commercial potential, structure rights ownership, and build financing and distribution strategies around compelling storytelling.
- Entertainment business models and revenue streams: Analyse how different platforms generate income, from theatrical and streaming to publishing and merchandising, and evaluate opportunities across traditional and emerging channels.
- AI, innovation and technology for revenue and efficiency: Assess how AI, virtual production and other innovations create new business opportunities while reducing operational costs in entertainment ventures.
- Cross-media storytelling and IP expansion: Study cross-platform successes like The Last of Us to understand how stories can build distinct but connected audiences across different mediums, and how individual projects combine to create sustainable company portfolios.
- Entertainment finance foundations: Build financial confidence step-by-step, from project budgeting through to 5–10-year forecasting. Finance knowledge develops week-by-week in manageable chunks: practical budgeting, profit & loss basics, cash flow management, then progressing to company funding, investment evaluation, and profit participation
- Legal frameworks and rights managements: Navigate copyright, chain of title, and key entertainment contracts from development deals to distribution agreements. Legal knowledge builds progressively week-by-week: IP fundamentals, copyright basics, optioning material, commissioning contracts, then advancing to distribution agreements, co-production structures, and company governance.
- Funding and investment readiness: Explore development funding, co-productions, tax credits, venture capital and equity investment while learning to structure compelling propositions for entertainment investors.
- Distribution strategy and global rights: Understand windowing, platform strategy, and how rights are licensed across territories to maximise long-term value from content.
- Pitching and strategic communication: Develop investor decks and strategic presentations that communicate effectively with commissioners, distributors, and financial partners.
- Creative leadership: Learn to build high-performing teams, manage creativecommercial
tensions, and scale from single projects to sustainable entertainment businesses.
You’ll also be supported by:
- A collaborative peer group from across a wide range of industries
- Templates, models, and real-world case studies
- Weekly tasks that build toward your final professional deliverable
- Recommended reading for those who want to explore more deeply
- A toolkit you can use long after the course ends
By the end, you'll have created a real-world outcome you can use to pitch a venture, secure investment, support a funding application, or propose a strategic shift within your current role.
This course is designed for anyone who wants to build or grow a business in the creative industries – no MBA required. Whether you're a producer, performer, writer, creative executive, entrepreneur, or advisor, you'll gain tools to make better business decisions and help your ideas succeed.
You might be:
- Advancing into a leadership or management role
- Planning to launch a production company or content creation venture
- Building technology platforms, financing tools, or creative services for the industry
- Growing an existing company, platform, or IP slate
- Developing workflow solutions or distribution services for content creators
- Leading a creative not-for-profit or social impact business
- Managing projects within a larger organisation
- Advising clients across legal, financial, or strategic roles
- Transitioning from another sector with a creative ambition
You'll join a dynamic learning community where everyone is building new knowledge, exploring ideas, and learning how to make creativity commercially and culturally sustainable.
If you're ready to take your next step – and want a clear, supportive guide to how the business works – this course is for you.
Ready to Apply?
We'd love to hear from you! Please send us:
- Your CV
- A covering letter telling us:
Why this course appeals to you
A brief overview of your background, experience and current projects
Any business training you've done before (don't worry if none - we just want to avoid repeating things you already know!)
Areas you're particularly interested in exploring (these might well expand as the course progresses)
How you learn best
Your general interests - A 60-second video pitch about yourself - just grab your phone and tell us who you are and what excites you. No editing please!
Tutors
Department Graduate Success
NFTS graduates are equipped to pursue careers across filmmaking, television production, advertising and more. Graduates have gone on to set up their own companies, produce award winning films and succeed across the creative business sector.
Recent Creative Business credits and successes include...
Jonny McCausland
Jonny graduated from the Creative Business MA course in 2024, and is now running a new Development Lab at Hat Trick Productions.
Department Graduate Success
NFTS graduates are equipped to pursue careers across filmmaking, television production, advertising and more. Graduates have gone on to set up their own companies, produce award winning films and succeed across the creative business sector.
Recent Creative Business credits and successes include...
Liam Stout
MA Creative Business graduate, Head of Business Development, Fable.
Department Graduate Success
NFTS graduates are equipped to pursue careers across filmmaking, television production, advertising and more. Graduates have gone on to set up their own companies, produce award winning films and succeed across the creative business sector.
Recent Creative Business credits and successes include...
Nick Horrowitz
MA Creative Business graduate, and Director, Photographer and Founder of independent creative studio and production house, The Clerkenwell Brothers.
Clients: Little Moons, Garnier, HOMETHINGS, Zapp
Department Graduate Success
NFTS graduates are equipped to pursue careers across filmmaking, television production, advertising and more. Graduates have gone on to set up their own companies, produce award winning films and succeed across the creative business sector.
Recent Creative Business credits and successes include...
La Chimera
Cannes 2023 Official Selection
Producer Carlo Cresto-Dina
(MA Creative Business graduate)
Department Graduate Success
NFTS graduates are equipped to pursue careers across filmmaking, television production, advertising and more. Graduates have gone on to set up their own companies, produce award winning films and succeed across the creative business sector.
Recent Creative Business credits and successes include...
Anna Bogutskaya
MA Creative Business graduate and Freelance Writer, Host and Broadcaster, Co-Founder of horror film collective The Final Girls and Festival Director of Underwire Festival.
