By Aby Jose Koilparambil
(Reuters) - With podcasts becoming all the rage since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, companies such as Workspace (LON:WKP) Group are seeing strong demand for flexible office space from audio and video production professionals, it said.
London-focused Workspace, which serves mostly small- and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurs, said the number of customers using its office spaces for film or video production surged 71% to 181 customers by September this year, compared with the corresponding period in 2020.
The booming demand for video content by advertisers, influencers and public figures bodes well for Workspace's business model of providing unfurnished spaces in buildings owned by the London-listed firm.
The company has done 30 new lettings to audio and video production businesses in the first six months of its 2023-24 fiscal year.
"The flexibility of our spaces allows those new and emerging industries to really be able to take off and do something which, frankly, they just couldn't do anywhere else," Workspace Chief Financial Officer Dave Benson told Reuters.
"For a podcast, they will typically put a desk and make a set behind it. It might be a couple of armchairs, with a lovely pink wall behind, or it could be fitted out like a dressing room for a football podcast," Benson said.
Workspace counts GoalHanger Podcasts, which produces some of the UK's most popular podcasts including "The Rest is Politics" and "The Rest is Football", as one of its tenants, at its Kennington Park property in southwest London.
The company, which provides spaces to a variety of clients, from architects to florists and craft beer brewers to app developers, has about 80 properties, mainly across London.