Germany set to ‘displace UK’ as leading European SVOD market

Germany is set to surpass the UK as Europe’s strongest video-on-demand market following strong growth by Netflix and Amazon, according to an analysis by Ampere Analysis and video-on-demand service Cirkus.

According to the analysis, Netflix gained about 400,000 new subscribers in Germany from the end of the second quarter and Amazon Prime gained nearly 700,000.

Compared to Q3 2017, Netflix increased its subscriber base by 46% to 5.1 million While Amazon increased its base by 24% to 9.9 million.

Mark Bradford, co-founder and director of Cirkus, Germany’s strong growth will enable it to displace the UK as the number one SVOD market in Europe by the end of this year.

Bradford highlighted the success of Netflix and Amazon in the 45-plus age group, the market targeted by his own service. According to Ampere Analysis, 35% of Amazon Prime’s subscribers and 25% of Netflix subscribers are aged 45 or over.

“Amazon and Netflix are clearly driving the SVOD market in Germany and have now reached significant scale. Their success in firmly establishing SVOD in German households now presents opportunities for more niche, genre based SVOD services such as Cirkus. As the ‘late majority’, notably the 50-plus age demographic, now enters the German SVOD market we believe Cirkus is well placed to appeal to this audience and to carve out a share of this fast-growing market,” said Bradford.

According to Ampere Analysis, 20% of the Netflix catalogue currently come from EU-28 countries, with 7% of the catalogue being German productions. In the case of Amazon Prime, 25% of all titles already come from EU-28 countries, with 16% being German productions.

“With their continued year-on-year growth in investment in European content, both acquired and originally produced, the planned EU quota will not pull against Netflix and Amazon Prime’s already established strategy of increasingly investing in local content,” said Bradford.