Season Recap

Dragons’ Den Season 17 Recap: Every Deal Worth Knowing

Season 17 by the numbers: 69 pitches, 26 deals, the biggest checks, and the products that are still selling.

Dragons' Den IndexUpdated 30 January 20266 min read

Series 17 of Dragons' Den, first broadcast 2019 to 2020, put 69 pitches in front of the panel. 26 of them walked out with a deal, a strike rate of 38 percent, and the Dragons collectively put about £576K behind the businesses they backed.

Series 17, which aired across 2019 and 2020, saw the deal rate fall back from the highs of series 16, though it still closed well above half the pitches that came before series 12.

Across the 22 series in our index, series 17's total investment of £576K ranks 12th highest, and its 26 deals rank 8th highest by count. Those two rankings don't always move together, since a series can rack up a lot of small deals or a handful of large ones, and series 17 sits where it sits on both counts.

How many pitches got a deal in series 17?

Of the 69 pitches that appeared in series 17, 26 secured investment, for a deal rate of 38 percent. That dropped compared with the 47 percent deal rate the series before it, which gives a sense of how choosy, or how generous, this particular panel of Dragons was being that year.

None of this means the other pitches were bad businesses. Dragons' Den has always turned down founders who go on to build successful companies without a Dragon's money, and it has funded some that later folded. The deal rate measures what happened in the room, not how the businesses performed afterwards.

It's also worth reading the 38 percent figure alongside the raw count. 69 pitches is a larger field than most series in this index, so the same deal rate can represent very different numbers of actual businesses funded depending on how many founders got through the door that year.

The biggest deal of series 17

The biggest single deal of series 17 went to Drynks Unlimited, which secured £125,000 in exchange for 7.5 percent equity. The investment came from Sara Davies.

A 7.5 percent stake for £125,000 values Drynks Unlimited at roughly £1,666,667 at the point of the deal, the kind of valuation math that plays out on screen every time a Dragon and a founder haggle over percentage points.

That single deal accounts for a meaningful share of the series' total investment: £125,000 of the £576K the Dragons put into series 17 overall went into just this one pitch, which is a useful reminder that a series total is rarely spread evenly across every deal made.

What the Dragons backed most in series 17

The categories that did best with the Dragons in series 17 were Other, Tech & Software and Fashion & Beauty. 'Other' topping the list is normal for this show: Dragons' Den pitches cover everything from kitchen gadgets to fintech apps, and a large share of any series doesn't fit neatly into a single retail category.

Beyond that catch-all, the categories that stood out say something about what founders were bringing to the Den that year, and which of those ideas the panel judged worth backing.

Tech & Software taking a top spot in series 17 lines up with the kinds of products that tend to translate well to a live studio pitch: something the Dragons can hold, taste or try, rather than a service they have to take on faith.

Which series 17 businesses are still trading?

Based on our tracking, Cloven Hoof Rum, Flush Brush, Irish Black Butter and Scrumbles are still trading in some form as of 2026.

Dragons' Den success is not measured only in who gets a deal on the night. Some of the strongest survivors from any given series turned down an offer, or never got one, and built the business anyway. Deal or no deal, survival past broadcast is the harder test.