One of Equity’s most important jobs is to ensure performers share in the commercial success of their film, television, radio and audio work. We do this by negotiating secondary payments and royalties to remunerate performers, including actors, singers, comedians, dancers and choreographers, stunt artists and stunt coordinators, voiceover and audio artists, performance capture artists, and cast album recording artists, for the exploitation and re-use of their audio and audiovisual work.
Performers who are engaged on Equity contracts are entitled to secondary payments and royalties.
Advice about secondary payments
Royalties are triggered for a range of reasons as set out in Equity’s agreements and artist contracts such as programme repeats on analogue and digital channels, sales of programmes around the world, downloads and catch-up services, and when cinema films generate a profit and performers receive a share of those profits.
As well as monitoring our film and television agreements via contract enforcement to ensure performers receive what is due to them, Equity also collects and distributes certain types of royalty payments to performers.
The following sections go into more detail about the type of secondary payments performers are entitled to when they work on Equity contracts, how the contract enforcement process works, and what payments are administered from our in-house distributions service.
