Enquirer Consulting Group

Reachable Buyer Map

Prepared for Alaina Creedy · MUSO · August 2026
MUSO sells one dataset into two budgets that rarely meet. One buyer is protecting revenue, and in this market that purchase reads as a cost of defense. The other is deciding what to acquire, greenlight or cast, and the same purchase reads as a decision tool. This map covers where both of them sit across the US, UK and European markets, who signs, and roughly how many there are.
Film and television rights holders and distributors
The core segment, and the one where the two buyers are furthest apart. Enforcement sits with legal or operations, demand data sits with acquisitions and research, and at most companies in this segment the two do not compare notes.
Who signs: head of content protection, VP of distribution or licensing, head of research and insight, general counsel, and the chief executive at independent companies.
3,000 to 4,000
production and distribution companies across the US, UK and Europe holding international rights of their own
Streaming platforms and broadcasters
The largest spend and the slowest process. Every acquisition decision made here is a bet on demand in a specific territory, which happens to be the exact question your audience data answers without argument.
Who signs: chief content officer, head of content strategy or acquisitions, head of insight, and the platform security or anti-piracy lead.
1,000 to 1,400
licensed broadcasters and subscription streaming services across the same three markets
Sports rights holders, leagues and federations
The shortest decision window on the page, because the value of a live stream expires in ninety minutes and the rights cycle carries a published date. Urgency here is structural rather than something you have to create.
Who signs: head of media rights, commercial director, head of broadcast operations, legal counsel.
Roughly 400 to 600
national and international leagues, federations and rights agencies; below that level rights sit with individual clubs and the count is far larger
Book, journal and academic publishing
The segment that has lived with the problem longest and measured it least. Enforcement budgets already exist here, insight budgets mostly do not yet, which makes this a category to be defined rather than a field to be competed in.
Who signs: rights director, digital or content director, head of content protection, general counsel.
3,500 to 4,500
publishers of scale across the US, UK and Europe, deliberately excluding the long tail of independent imprints
Games and software publishers
The buyer here already instruments everything and will argue with your numbers, which is a good sign. Piracy is treated as a live operations problem rather than a legal one, so the conversation starts with the product team.
Who signs: head of publishing, live operations director, head of platform integrity or anti-piracy, general counsel.
2,500 to 3,500
companies publishing paid titles across the same three markets
Music rights holders and distributors
The smallest budget per company and the largest number of catalogs. Value concentrates in the groups rather than the individual labels, so a few relationships reach most of the market.
Who signs: head of digital, head of content protection, commercial or licensing director.
2,000 to 3,000
labels, distributors and rights administrators of scale across the same three markets

Where the openings are

1
Two buyers, two budgets, one dataset. Content protection is a cost line signed by legal or operations. Demand insight is a decision line signed by acquisitions, research or strategy. In this category the same company can buy twice and usually does not, because the second seat never hears the pitch. Reaching both means running two named audiences, not one list.
2
The insight buyer is the larger of the two and the one this category works least. Protection teams are small, named and finite, and you can count them. Acquisitions, research, distribution and strategy seats exist at every company above and at many that have no protection function at all. That is a materially bigger addressable list, and it buys the data as a tool rather than as an insurance cost.
3
One of these segments runs on a public calendar. Sports rights cycles and market dates are published years ahead. Reaching a head of media rights in the quarter the cycle opens is a scheduling problem, not a persuasion problem. Watching several hundred named bodies for their window is mechanical work that runs quietly in the background once it is built.
Built from public market data covering licensed broadcasters, registered production and publishing companies and national sports bodies across the US, UK and European markets, and counts are banded deliberately. There is no single register of rights holders anywhere, so these figures describe companies at a scale that would hold international rights rather than an exact count of them. The long tail of independent producers, imprints and studios is deliberately excluded. It describes the market rather than your business, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
ENQUIRER CONSULTING GROUP
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