Season Recap

Dragons’ Den Season 9 Recap: Every Deal Worth Knowing

Season 9 by the numbers: 80 pitches, 16 deals, the biggest checks, and the products that are still selling.

Dragons' Den IndexUpdated 4 March 20266 min read

Series 9 aired in 2011 and brought the show's long run of climbing, then steady, close rates to a slight pause. Our index logs 80 pitches, of which 16 secured a deal, a strike rate of 20 percent, a small dip from series 8's 21 percent but still well within the range the show had held for five straight series.

It was a series of consistency more than surprise, closing out the run of series covered in this recap batch. Here is the breakdown.

The Numbers

The Dragons committed a combined £480,000 across series 9's 16 deals, down from series 8's £560,000 despite series 9 producing nearly as many successful pitches, 16 against 17. That put series 9's average cheque size a little below the series before it, continuing a pattern where deal count and total investment did not always move in lockstep.

£480,000 across 16 deals averages roughly £30,000 per business, sitting almost exactly between series 7's £27,000 and series 8's £33,000 averages. Three series in a row, series 7 through 9, now cluster in that same low-to-mid £20,000-to-£30,000 average deal size range, a marked contrast with the £60,000-plus averages series 4 through 6 produced.

The Biggest Deal

Ploughcroft Solar took the series' largest deal, securing £120,000 for 25 percent of the business from a joint investment by Deborah Meaden and Theo Paphitis. It matched Motor Mouse's series 7 total of £120,000 as the joint-smallest headline deal recorded across the last several series in this run, another sign of series 9 running on more modest average cheques.

At 25 percent equity, Ploughcroft Solar's implied valuation comes out at £480,000, exactly matching the series' entire total investment figure as a coincidence of the numbers, and a solid valuation for a solar installation business in an era when renewable energy was still a relatively new pitch category on the show.

What the Dragons Were Backing

Other topped the category rankings yet again, with Kids & Education and Tech & Software rounding out the top three, the same shape as series 5 and series 8. By series 9, this top-three combination had become the show's default, appearing in the majority of series covered in this recap run so far.

Ploughcroft Solar's presence as the series' biggest deal, despite Green & CleanTech not cracking the top three category slots outright, hints that individual green energy pitches were starting to punch above their category's overall representation, landing some of the series' largest cheques even while the category as a whole stayed a step behind Kids & Education and Tech & Software in volume.

Who's Still Trading

Dust Elimin 8, Egglu, Gloven and Human Cannonball are all tracked as still selling in our index. That is a healthy four confirmed long-term survivors out of 16 deals, in line with the survival ratios seen across most of the show's early-to-middle series.

Across series 1 through 9 as a whole, a pattern holds: roughly a quarter to a half of the deals struck in any given series have gone on to become confirmed long-term survivors in our index, regardless of how big or small the series' total investment was.

Series 9 in Context

Series 9's 20 percent close rate keeps the Den firmly within the narrow band it settled into from series 4 onward, never straying far from one in five pitches landing a deal. Solar energy's appearance at the top of the series via Ploughcroft Solar also hints at where the show's category interests were starting to head, as green technology pitches would keep growing in the series that followed.

Taken together, series 1 through 9 tell the story of a show that started volatile, found its footing around series 4, and then spent the rest of its first decade refining rather than reinventing its formula: a close rate hovering near one in five, category preferences settling into a familiar rotation, and cheque sizes that moved with the times more than with any single Dragon's mood.

Series 9 closes out the first nine years of the Den on a steady, unremarkable note by its own standards, which, given how volatile the show's opening series were, is itself a notable achievement. Consistency, more than any single blockbuster deal, is what defines this stretch of the show's history.