He added: “The fact that it was the regeneration of The Doctor was really valuable to us, given the fact that we’re trying to educate as a brand and a category that the regeneration of old to new is very much at the heart of what we do.”
Further brand partnerships are in discussions to activate for 2024.
The audience growth game
Despite the airing of the three specials and the Christmas episode, the partnership with Disney has yet to fully kick into gear, with the announcement of the next full season of the series still to be made—although it is expected to be in the early spring. And while “the House of the Mouse” has also yet to reveal how it plans to back the show, insiders have alluded to a whole new level of promotion as it aims to expand fandom globally, as well as to appeal to more advertisers and brands.
“We want to talk to Disney about working together on some global partnerships, and early conversations about that we’re also thinking, because these have been so successful,” explained Bold. “Those big partners that we might want to work with will be probably really excited to work with us, which is great and puts us in a fantastic situation … people have actually come to us because they want to work with Doctor Who.”
The show already has a global audience, with 4.7 million fans on Facebook, 1.8 million subscribers on YouTube and 1.6 million followers through X, recording 3.6 million unique viewers across YouTube and Facebook alone in October. It also launched a TikTok account that has accumulated 10.1 million likes and 406,400 followers since its debut in the summer of 2022, with its aim to grow its appeal to younger audiences.
According to Similarweb, the official BBC Doctor Who homepage attracts a monthly audience of almost 656,000 visitors, too.
“We’ve always had quite a strong fandom, and that fandom keeps coming back … but we need to reach a new audience beyond our fandom,” explained Bold. “We’re using different ways to reach those audiences. We’ve been talking about partnerships, paid media and influencer activity just to broaden our reach significantly beyond what our core audience has always been.”
And surprisingly, with seemingly hundreds of dedicated podcasts already in existence, the team also recently launched the first official Doctor Who podcast, as well.
