Comcast-owned Sky is Europe’s largest TV company by revenue, which reached $18.6 billion (€16.3 billion) in 2020, compared to $7.0 billion (€6.15 billion) for Netflix’s European operations, making the streamer the continent’s third-largest television group, according to a new report published Tuesday.
German public broadcaster ARD, with $7.45 billion (€6.53 billion) in revenue, the most of it coming in the form of the national TV tax, is Europe’s number 2.
But Netflix is the undisputed champion of European subscription VOD, with a 35 percent market share, industry think tank European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO) found in its latest study of 40 European countries. Netflix’s nearest streamer competitor in Europe, Amazon Prime Video, had a 20.4 percent share of the SVOD market, the report finds, and generated revenue of “just” $1.98 billion (€1.74 billion).
Related Stories
The study, which looked at the development of the European television industry from 2016-2020, found revenue growth across the entire sector, at 7.7 percent over the four-year period, was slightly better than inflation and the overall market. But more than 75 percent of that growth came from SVOD-only players, primarily Netflix, Amazon, and sports streamer DAZN.
Overall, the study estimates Netflix at the end of 2020 had 62.4 million European subscribers, compared to 36.5 million for Amazon Prime Video, 15.1 million for AppleTV+ and 14.6 million for Disney+, which only launched in select European territories in spring 2020.
Breaking down the numbers according to ownership, the study found U.S.-owned companies, including Sky, Netflix and Amazon, accounted for 30 percent of total European revenues, with 69 percent coming from European-owned companies. Just over a third (31 percent) of television revenues in Europe in 2020 came from public broadcasters, with 69 percent from commercial networks and streamers.
The report found significant concentration in Europe’s media sector, something the EAO said was being exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The top 20 European television companies accounted for 69 percent of total revenues in the sector in 2020, with the top five firms making up 33 percent. The streaming market was even more concentrated, with the top five players (Netflix, Amazon, Disney and Russian streamer Kinopoisk) accounting for 75 percent of all SVOD subscriptions in Europe, and the top 20 for 94 percent.
Pointing to recent mergers and acquisitions in Europe, including Disney’s acquisition of Fox International Channels’ European operations as part of the 20th Century Fox takeover, and Vodafone buyout of UPC operations in Europe from Liberty Global, the EAO said the strategic rationale of M&A deals varied significantly, from companies looking to gain size to acquire more premium content at competitive prices to platforms simply looking to expand into new territories.
