Report Published on State of VOD and Replay in Europe

By Pascal Lechevallier for ZDNet

The European Audiovisual Observatory has published a report on the situation of SMAD in Europe. This is a unique opportunity to have an overview of the European audiovisual market in the digital age. This report compiles 253 pages of data on video on demand and replay, digging figures from European databases and reports published by different agencies in charge of the audiovisual industry in each state.

The report identified 3,088 on-demand services available in Europe in 18 categories. The top 5 countries are Britain with 682 services available, followed by France with 434, Germany (330 services), Sweden (153) and Italy (151). Note that the United States is present in the standings with 223 services available with the majority of sites VOD films (124).

Number of on-demand services by country of establishment and genre (February 2014)

In France, the most represented sites are Catch-up TV (Catch Up or Replay) of which there are 148.

An interesting statistic shows the details of the number of VOD services in each country and is broken down by country of establishment. 122 of these services are established in France, 24 in other countries of the European Union, and finally 86 from the United States. 75% of English VOD platforms are owned by U.S. companies and half of the platforms are also French (49.8%).

Number of VOD services available (all genres except adult) in the EU by country of establishment

In regards to the distribution of these services, France is distinguished by the fact that it is the first country to have so many platforms that are dual distribution: Internet and TV platforms (IPTV, cable, satellite, DTT etc.). 73 services are offered to French on the two modes of distribution.

The report devotes an entire section to Netflix, without disclosing figures on European performance of the firm in Los Gatos. The report is mainly based on official data released by Netflix, that is to say nothing specific to the European market.

This report is timely for Netflix who will be able to use it in order to properly map the new territory expansion. What’s more useful for a new entrant to have than aggregated market data they want to conquer?

This is an excerpt. Click here to view the full article in ZDNet.

Click here to download the full report called “On-demand Audiovisual Markets in the European Union”