SVOD ‘driving growth’ in on-demand in Europe

Subscription video-on-demand is driving growth in the European pay on-demand market, accounting for two thirds of total 2016 pay on-demand service revenue in 2016 going to SVOD players, against only 11% five years earlier, according to a report by the European Audiovisual Observatory.

The report found that the SVOD market was still relatively small in relation to the pay TV market, accounting for 18% of all pay subscriptions in 2016, up from 1% five years earlier, and accounting for 6.8% of revenues, up from 0.2%.

Despite this relatively low base, SVOD is growing fast. SVOD services were taken by 38.7 million subscribers in the EU at the end of 2016, and by 43.5 million in Europe including non-EU countries. This represents an annual growth rate of 55.5% in the EU between 2011-16 and an annual growth rate of 54.2% for Europe as a whole.

Some 17% of EU households took SVOD services in 2016, with Scandinavia accounting for four of the top five countries in terms of penetration.

SVOD revenues increased by 128% a year between 2011-16 in the EU countries. The top five countries by SVOD revenue were the UK, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, which together accounted together for 69% of total SVOD revenue in Europe.

A total of 197 SVOD services were active in Europe by the end of December 2016. Netflix held an estimated 47% share of OTT SVOD subscriptions, with Amazon holding a 20% share.