BBC chief customer officer Kerris Bright has said that locking people out of iPlayer if they don’t have a TV licence could be an option for the future.

The TV licence, which is currently £180 per year, is how the BBC receives most of its funding. Households can opt out of paying the licence if they do not use BBC services. The number of households paying in recent years has dropped, leaving the corporation trying to find ways of catching people who use their services without paying for a licence. It also recently produced an ad talking about the benefits of the BBC, which can be viewed below.

Deadline have reported that, during an all-staff call on Monday (July 20), Bright said blocking non-payers from using iPlayer could be a possibility for the future, although impractical in the present. “iPlayer is the only service really that’s licensable where you could actually decide to put a gate in front of it,” she said, “but the data today says that actually [there’s] not really the return on investment for doing that.”

She explained that the “vast majority” of iPlayer users have TV licences, and that implementing a system where people have to find their licence details to sign in would make the service inconvenient. However, she added: “As we go into the future, more of an IPTV world, audiences changing behavior, new ways of creating experiences that maybe aren’t so full of friction for audiences… that might absolutely be an opportunity for us, depending on the funding model.”

The BBC is currently discussing changes to its charter with the government, which is likely to involve how the funding model for the public service broadcaster can evolve. Last year, it was suggested that a licence could be required to access non-BBC streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+.

Last week, the BBC revealed its highest earning presenters in its annual report, which was led by radio presenter Scott Mills prior to his sacking last March.