Season Recap

Dragons’ Den Season 19 Recap: Every Deal Worth Knowing

Season 19 by the numbers: 59 pitches, 28 deals, the biggest checks, and the products that are still selling.

Dragons' Den IndexUpdated 10 September 20256 min read

Series 19 of Dragons' Den, first broadcast in 2022, put 59 pitches in front of the panel. 28 of them walked out with a deal, a strike rate of 47 percent, and the Dragons collectively put about £990K behind the businesses they backed.

Series 19, broadcast across 2022, eased back slightly from the series 18 high but still closed with just under half of all pitches landing a deal.

Across the 22 series in our index, series 19's total investment of £990K ranks 6th highest, and its 28 deals rank 6th 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 19 sits where it sits on both counts.

How many pitches got a deal in series 19?

Of the 59 pitches that appeared in series 19, 28 secured investment, for a deal rate of 47 percent. That dropped compared with the 50 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 47 percent figure alongside the raw count. 59 pitches is a leaner field than the biggest 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 19

The biggest single deal of series 19 went to Cheesegeek, which secured £150,000 in exchange for 7.5 percent equity. The investment came from Steven Bartlett.

A 7.5 percent stake for £150,000 values Cheesegeek at roughly £2,000,000 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: £150,000 of the £990K the Dragons put into series 19 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 19

The categories that did best with the Dragons in series 19 were Other, Tech & Software and Liquor & Alcohol. '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 19 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 19 businesses are still trading?

Based on our tracking, Cheesegeek, Extend Robotics, Flux Choice Ltd and Meg Heath Dog Leads 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.