Last week, the European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO) published two brand-new reports: “SVoD Usage in the European Union” (authored by Christian Grece and Jean-Augustin Tran) and “Film and TV content in TVoD, SVoD and FoD catalogues – 2023 Edition” (written by Grece only).

The first report provides an extensive analysis of the consumption of films and TV seasons on SVoD in nine member states of the European Union in 2022/23, whilst the second focuses on the offer of films and TV seasons in the VoD catalogues of 25 member states of the European Union in September 2023.

In detail, the VoD catalogue data are provided by JustWatch, and the VoD usage data are provided by Goldmedia. Both studies were backed by the European Commission’s Creative Europe programme.

Zooming in on the first piece of research, “SVoD Usage in the European Union” is the first edition of an overview of the viewing time on SVoD services of films and TV seasons by origin, genre and age (only for films). Specifically, the study is based on SVoD viewing time data provided by Goldmedia’s VoD-Ratings in nine EU countries (Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden) from September 2022 to September 2023.

The document lists several key findings. The first is concentration, as 85% of viewing time is generated by three services (Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+). Fiction works accounted for 87% and 95% of viewing time of film and TV seasons, respectively. Moreover, viewing time is widely generated by recent films (produced between 2022 and 2023), which represented 25% of viewing time but only 1% of catalogues.

The study acknowledges that the sample of EU countries may be limited. Nevertheless, it allows us to identify “nuances”, in particular in terms of genres. That being said, the report indicates that, on the whole, “consumption patterns are similar across all countries”.

“European works accounted for 30% of SVoD viewing time, including 21% for EU works, 9% for UK works and 1% for other European works. When comparing their share in catalogues and viewing time, US works are systematically overconsumed and European works underconsumed. However, among European works, national ones are overconsumed in seven out of the nine countries of the sample, whereas EU non-national works are underconsumed in all countries,” the report continues.

It is also worth mentioning the presence of “a modest weight of consumption of works from other regions of the world” (8%, excluding Europe and the USA, and “well under their share of catalogues”).

Meanwhile, the second study lists three key findings. The first reveals that European film and TV content accounted for 31% of all works in VoD catalogues in 25 member states of the European Union, with EU27 works representing 21% and other European works 10% (32% in TVoD catalogues, 31% in SVoD and 26% in FoD [films on demand] catalogues).

Next, for all types of VoD catalogues, European non-national works represented the majority of EU27 works, with 64% of all EU27 works in TVoD catalogues being of EU non-national origin, 78% in SVoD and 67% in FoD catalogues.

Finally, VoD catalogues in high- and mid-volume film and TV production countries such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain rely more on national works for their EU27 offering (with 64% of all EU27 works in VoD catalogues in France being of national origin), whilst VoD catalogues in lower-volume production countries rely mostly on EU non-national works for their EU27 works offering (with 1% of EU27 works being of national origin in VoD catalogues in Bulgaria, for example).