Steph McGovern opens The Big Deal with Steph McGovern by saying “buying and collecting art is something we can all have a go at,” but Apollo argues the series gives viewers a simplified picture of how the art market works. The clash matters because the programme puts a mainstream face on a market built around access, pricing and resale rules that are not remotely equal for everyone.
That first-episode setup is built around an auction-style contest. Contestants have to persuade an artist to let them represent work at auction, choose the work, push for the lowest reserve price possible, then present the pieces at the preview and sell them to bidders. They are judged on profit, with the artist taking the total hammer price and the contestants keeping 30 per cent on top of it.
Cordelia de Freitas on market knowledge
Cordelia de Freitas, who is the director of the Aqua Art Miami fair, tells the contestants they need to “understand their market”. That line lands awkwardly against the show’s framing, because the article says most art auctions sit in the secondary market rather than the primary one. In other words, the programme is treating one narrow sales route as if it stood in for the whole business.
The production also leans on the Filthy Fox Auction Club, described as an artist-run auction platform. The sale itself is presented less as a hard-nosed market exercise than a spectacle: the article says it looks more like a hen night than an auction, with auctioneers in orange jumpsuits and slightly intimidating German accents. Most of the art sells, but the value on offer is not high.
Steph McGovern and the art market
McGovern is not outside this territory. She describes herself as a financial journalist, was the main producer of financial news on the Today programme on Radio 4, produced business news for One, and later presented programmes on the and Channel 4, including Watchdog and Steph’s Packed Lunch. The article says she is qualified for the show because her father is a sculptor, but that background does not remove the gap between the programme’s promise and the market it portrays.
The sharpest example is the resale story around Damien Hirst. A collector bought Bodies in 1989 for £600 and sold it at auction for £1.4m in 2020. That is an outlier, not the rule: the article says most artworks do not increase in value, which is exactly why a televised auction game can mislead viewers if it suggests art collecting is broadly open and reliably profitable.
Damien Hirst and resale value
The series may be entertaining, but its own premise is the problem. McGovern says art collecting is something everyone can have a go at; the article answers that art collecting is defined by exclusivity, and the market’s returns depend on structures the show only partly exposes. For viewers coming to the subject through Steph McGovern, the useful question is not whether the contestants can win the game, but whether the programme shows enough of the market to explain why most people never get to play it in the first place.
