US companies dominating European TV market
European TV market is largely an American business, a new study stresses. Sky, owned by US-company Comcast, is Europe’s largest TV company by revenue – euro 16.3 billion in 2020 – followed by German public broadcaster ARD with Euro 6.53 billion revenue mainly from taxes. American Netflix is the third biggest in Europe with Euro 6.15 billion in revenue. Netflix is by far the biggest measured by video on demand subscription with 35% market share, according to an overview by the European Audiovisual Observatory.
The number 2 streaming service in Europe is American Amazon Prime Video with 20.4% market share followed by US-based Apple with 8.4%.
The report says the top 100 audiovisual companies in Europe showed some resilience to the pandemic which has been accelerating pre-existing market trends. Their cumulated operating AV services revenues grew slightly more (+7.7% over 2016 at the end of 2020) than average inflation and the overall market.
Another significant change is that public players, measured by revenues, diminish between 2016 and 2020 (down by 3% to 31%). Public service broadcaster´s revenues decreased over the same period by 0.4% in real terms.
“Also, these players were not part of the consolidation game. Overall, the revenues of the traditional players have more or less stagnated, while the growth of the top 100 players was largely driven by the new subscription video on demand (SVOD) players. Netflix, Amazon and DAZN, accounted cumulatively for more than 75% of the revenue growth registered between 2016 and 2020 at the top 100 level.”
Concentration levels remain largely the same among the top 100 European AV groups. Over the five-year period, the top 20 players had around 70% of top 100 revenues.
The private European AV sector is less concentrated than the US one. The top five private European AV players account for 53% of top 20 revenues as opposed to 62% for players on the US market
The US interests in top 100 revenues has increased (by +4% up to 31% in 2020) due to the rise of the pure subscription video on demand players.
”US-backed AV players in Europe particularly stand out in the private sector where they comprised 44% of the main players’ revenues at the end of 2020. Two thirds of the US share were accounted for by Sky, Netflix, Amazon and DAZN. The share of US interests is by far the highest in the SVOD market, with around four in five subscriptions signed off by a US-backed OTT platform.”
By contrast, pay TV remains largely a European-driven business (US-backed companies account for only 16% of subscriptions), the report shows.
US interests are less significant as regards TV audiences (only 11% of viewing time) as most of the main national broadcasters are still controlled by European interests.
”However, US-backed broadcasters are likely to claim a larger share of advertising as public service broadcasters are bound to access only a limited share”, the report says.
US groups have launched a large range of thematic channels and catalogues all over Europe, which is reflected in a comparatively higher share by number of TV channels (19%) and on-demand services (25%) operated in Europe. Discovery, Sky, ViacomCBS and Disney are the top four networks in Europe by number of TV channels, while Discovery and Disney also rank among the top four groups by number of on-demand services.
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