Case Study: British Film Institute achieves data-driven subscription retention with ChartMogul

How BFI, the leading UK film body, is tackling the subscription economy

The British Film Institute (BFI) is the UK’s long-standing film archive and cultural body, custodian of hundreds of thousands of film and TV titles. Faced with the limits of a single major London venue, BFI needed to extend its reach into the subscription economy by launching a video‑on‑demand service that could compete not on catalogue size but on curated quality, while also tackling platform fragmentation and the need to measure subscriber behaviour.

BFI responded by launching BFI Player and the BFI Player+ subscription (£4.99/month) to offer hand‑picked classics and cult titles with expert recommendations (including weekly picks from critic Mark Kermode). The team paired editorial curation with data tools like ChartMogul to track churn, measure email and partner offer impact via cohort analysis, and make metric-driven product choices — expanding digital reach, improving retention insights, and enabling a selective platform strategy for future growth.

British Film Institute

Duncan McKenzie

Lead Product Manager