Key TV and streaming trends presented by EAO at Series Mania Forum
The 10th Anniversary Edition of the European Audiovisual Observatory's annual Key Trends report has just been launched at the Series Mania Forum in Lille this morning. The report was presented during the first panel of the Forum, moderated by Susanne Nikoltchev, Executive Director at European Audiovisual Observatory and featuring Manuel Alduy from France Televisions, Carolina Lorenzon from MFE and Gilles Fontaine from the European Audiovisual Observatory.
The full report can be found here.
The Observatory highlighted the stagnation in financing, especially for commercial broadcasters. Lorenzon shared that “for the markets where we operate in, MFE (Media for Europe), we control MediaSet in Italy and in Spain and we own a significant stake in the German commercial broadcaster ProSieben, Italy and Spain can tell a different story. In the past five years, we actually grew by 9%. And the secret of this is that we have a multi-platform distribution so we can sell our advertising proposals. And of course, linear TV complemented by radio in Italy, OTT services, and outdoor digital. So this creates an ecosystem around quality content, professional content, general inter-services, where in the current scenario for the markets, advertising clients do find a meaningful position. I can't say we're set to grow. We want to continue to hold on to our quality offer and our revenues for the time being are not dwindling.”
Alduy added that “what's very nice in your table is that it stops in 2023 because in many European countries, especially in France maybe, we are in advance in 2024 last year and this year again and maybe next year the big funding of our channels has been reduced. So I'm sure that if we meet again next year, you will see a drop. And I think in Europe, when I discuss with our colleagues from other public services in the region, either we have governments who are trying really to destabilise or reduce the funding of public services or it's just, like in France, a problem of general public finance where there are issues how to save money and we are part of the solution or the problem. So there is no growth dynamic at all in public funding.”
The panelists also noted that there are more and more series that are shared by a streamer and a broadcaster. The streamers were also mentioned with regards to increasing the inflation in production and also with the fact that they spend 3 times more than broadcasters for the same amount of series and hours. And as far as co-productions are concerned, out of 4 only 1 Is successful in Spain for example. EAO reps noted that the number of non-linguistic (i.e. not based on common language territories like France-Belgium, Germany-Austria), co-productions has been growing, not very rapidly over the last year, but to some extent echoing what we have been reading about new efforts to maybe reinvent co-productions.
Alduy elaborated that “three trends: inflation, more acquisition opportunities, and a new windowing on series with streamers, have led us to reconsider the way we are producing series. Our domestic fiction is, I think it's the same across Europe, is super efficient and we don't need anyone to finance it and it's the same when I look in other countries in Europe. But when we want to have fiction with another genre, more expensive, a period drama, an adventure series, whatever, we have one project about Mars, well, we cannot just bear the budget alone, so that's what we need to follow a different way to get the financing. Initially, and still today, our plan A is to try to find other broadcasters in Europe.” The exec gave an example with their new series Kabul which is a co-production with ZDF and New8. “It's a 3 million euro per episode, 6 episodes, so quite expensive for us. And that's exactly what we are looking for when we do a production, trying to find something we can finance alone. The plan B is to work with streamers, because they have a lot of money.”
The EAO 2025 report TV has identified that fiction production in Europe has reached a turning point. After a brief post-pandemic return to growth, the production and release of original TV fiction is declining. A 6% drop in the number of fiction titles produced in 2023 was mirrored by a similar reduction in the number of episodes and a stagnation in the volume of hours when compared to the previous year. On average, over 1 200 titles, 23 000 episodes and 14 000 hours1 of TV fiction are produced in Europe each year.
Considering this downward trend, a high interest in the production of shorter formats prevails. High-end TV series (3 to 13 episodes) continue to represent the most prominent TV series format: Well over half of the titles produced in 2023 were high-end TV series – a 105% increase since 2015. However, this remarkable development did not translate into a notable growth of volume of hours, as seasons had fewer and shorter episodes (probably as a way to cope with production costs and inflation). The episode duration of most TV series produced in Europe is longer than 16 minutes, typically 36 to 65 minutes. High-end TV series are crucial to the weight of new series: Around 65% of all 3-to-13-episode-per-season series titles produced in 2023 were new projects. The figure is nuanced, as a portion of these new projects were mini-series meant to last only one season.
Over half of fiction titles produced in Europe in 2023 were commissioned by public service broadcasters (55%), followed by private broadcasters (31%) and global streamers (14%). However, since private broadcasters tend to dedicate a bigger share of their commissioning to daily soaps and telenovelas, they produced a higher volume of hours (57%) than public service broadcasters (39%). Global streamers accounted for just 5% of hours as they do not invest in long-running TV series.
Co-productions made up 10% of all TV fiction titles produced in Europe in 2023. On average, over 100 TV fiction co-productions are produced in Europe each year, almost exclusively high-end TV series and TV films.
The report also notes that SVOD usage in Europe is marked by concentration. Three SVOD services (Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+) account for 85% of viewing time. The consumption of genres is also highly concentrated, with fiction works accounting for 87% and 95% of film and TV content, respectively. The consumption of films appears also mainly driven by recent titles. They account for 25% of viewing time while representing only 1% of the catalogues. SVOD viewing is almost equally split between films2 and TV content. But each segment presents quite different characteristics: film usage on SVOD is much less concentrated than TV content usage; originals commissioned by the streamers get a much more significant viewing share for TV content (close to 60%) than for films (less than 25%); whereas animation and documentary works generally account for a smaller share of viewing than their share in catalogues, the gap is wider for TV content than for films. Differences between film and TV content are even more apparent when considering the origin of works. Overall, European works account for 30% of SVOD viewing time, with a slightly higher share for films than for TV series, and a higher share for documentaries than for fiction or animation. But figures vary significantly between Spain, Italy and Poland, with more viewing dedicated to European content, and Sweden and Denmark more geared towards US works.
3 SVOD services (Netflix 53%, Prime Video 19% and Disney+ 12%) account together for 85% of viewing time.
With 12 703 audiovisual media services available throughout wider Europe,1 the European audiovisual sector is both vibrant and diverse. One in four audiovisual media services is now on demand (3 269 VOD services and video-sharing platforms). Still, the majority of services are linear, comprising 9 434 TV channels, which account for three-quarters of all audiovisual media services. Overall, the European audiovisual sector features a mix of a wide array of local players and global tech and media giants. US groups have a substantial influence on the European audiovisual sector. Nine out of 10 of the most widespread TV and VOD groups in Europe are US-based. Major US brands like Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, Netflix, and Amazon have a significant presence across multiple European markets. Around one in four (23%) of all private TV channels (excluding local TV) are US-owned and so are one in 10 (8%) of all on-demand services and videosharing platforms in Europe. US TV channel portfolios are significantly larger than European ones, with 71% of channels in the top 10 TV groups owned by five US companies. Local media services At the same time, local media services carry significant weight – 42% of TV channels in Europe are regional and local TV services. Around 71% of the Italian AV market is local channels – the equivalent of 18% of all local and regional channels in Europe. Six countries account for more than half of all local and regional TV channels – Italy, Spain, Hungary, Ukraine, the Netherlands and Germany, all of which offer more than 200 services. Availability of public channels serving local and regional audiences differs widely across Europe, ranging from more than 200 in the Netherlands to fewer than 10 in countries such as Finland, Ireland and Portugal.
While linear services offer a wide thematic range, on-demand services concentrate on entertainment and fiction, showcasing viewer preferences. With regards to ownership, the European TV market is divided into a public sector with mainly generalist programming available on DTT networks and a private sector which has expanded into thematic cable, IPTV, and satellite channels. Almost all on-demand services and VSPs are privately owned (97%). Public service media have entered the market as well, gradually expanding their catch-up services into full-fledged VOD services.
The AV market grew by 4.3% in the EU in 2023; but with inflation at 6.4%, the market actually shrank. Most of the traditional segments of the audiovisual sector are stagnating or declining in real terms: TV advertising, public funding by public service broadcasters, physical home video and box office revenues. The limited growth of the AV market is almost entirely due to two market segments: subscription and transactional video on demand.
Spending on European original content (excluding news and sports rights) reached a new high in 2023 at EUR 22 billion. After a (moderate) downturn in 2020 due to the pandemic, investments grew at a doubledigit rate in 2021 and 2022, but by only 8% in 2023, in a context of strong inflation. On the one hand, broadcasting groups’ spending was stable, meaning actually decreasing in real terms. On the other hand, global streamers, which doubled their investments in 2022, increased them by ‘only’ 34% in 2023. Overall, global streamers accounted for 26% of audiovisual service investments in European original content. This still strong increase of global streamers’ spending in Europe contrasts with the view that, globally, they put more emphasis on controlling their programming expenses. But two factors explain why Europe is still growing strongly: on the one hand, some streamers only recently started to invest in European original content (Disney+, Apple TV+, Paramount+, Max) and are still building a line-up of local content, in the context of the implementation of the investment obligations foreseen in the Audiovisual Media Services Directive. On the other hand, Europe is capturing a growing share of the streamers’ global content spending (20% in 2023 vs. 13% in 2021), as there is now more growth potential outside the US, as some European works have proven successful worldwide and as European works are cheaper to produce. Smaller countries struggle to benefit from the growth in content spending In 2023, the United Kingdom (29%) and Germany (20%) accounted for almost 50% of broadcasters’ and streamers’ investments in original European content, with France (14%), Spain (9%) and Italy (7%) joining the top five. However, the picture is somewhat different when focusing only on global streamers’ spending. Whereas the UK (35%) was again the first destination, Spain (18%) came a clear second ahead of France, Germany and Italy (11% each). Overall, while national broadcasters ensure a minimum level of national production in smaller countries, these countries seem to struggle to capture a significant share of streamers’ investments.
There were 31,000 writers and directors of films and TV/SVoD fiction between 2015-2022. However, the growth in production of European fiction series has seen writers and directors increasingly migrating to TV from film over the period. 60% of writing or directing assignments now go to TV. Once working in television, writers and directors tend to stay there as there are more work opportunities.
The share of female professionals across all job categories stands at 24% in film and 28% in television. The lowest share of female professionals is found for cinematographers and for composers. The share of women film directors stood at 25%, while female editors and producers both represented a 31% share of the workforce.
Streamers are keener on adaptations than traditional broadcasters. Some 12% of all film and TV fiction produced in Europe between 2015-22 were adaptations – the equivalent of 1,189 film and TV series. But the share was highest for streamers at 19%, compared to 13% for private and 11% for public broadcasters. The UK has the highest share of adaptations – 26% of all films and TV series are adaptations in the UK, followed by France (18%), Sweden (17%), Spain (16%) and Italy (15%).
US group Comcast, parent company of NBCUniversal and Sky, was the number one audiovisual group in Europe with €15.3bn of revenues in 2023. This was followed by Disney (€8.9bn) and Netflix (€8.1bn). Six of the top 10 AV players in Europe were represented by European groups, led by Germany’s ARD and RTL, followed by the BBC, Canal+, ITV and ProSiebenSat.1. From the US, Warner Bros Discovery was also in the top 10.
Alduy added that “what's very nice in your table is that it stops in 2023 because in many European countries, especially in France maybe, we are in advance in 2024 last year and this year again and maybe next year the big funding of our channels has been reduced. So I'm sure that if we meet again next year, you will see a drop. And I think in Europe, when I discuss with our colleagues from other public services in the region, either we have governments who are trying really to destabilise or reduce the funding of public services or it's just, like in France, a problem of general public finance where there are issues how to save money and we are part of the solution or the problem. So there is no growth dynamic at all in public funding.”
The panelists also noted that there are more and more series that are shared by a streamer and a broadcaster. The streamers were also mentioned with regards to increasing the inflation in production and also with the fact that they spend 3 times more than broadcasters for the same amount of series and hours. And as far as co-productions are concerned, out of 4 only 1 Is successful in Spain for example. EAO reps noted that the number of non-linguistic (i.e. not based on common language territories like France-Belgium, Germany-Austria), co-productions has been growing, not very rapidly over the last year, but to some extent echoing what we have been reading about new efforts to maybe reinvent co-productions.
Alduy elaborated that “three trends: inflation, more acquisition opportunities, and a new windowing on series with streamers, have led us to reconsider the way we are producing series. Our domestic fiction is, I think it's the same across Europe, is super efficient and we don't need anyone to finance it and it's the same when I look in other countries in Europe. But when we want to have fiction with another genre, more expensive, a period drama, an adventure series, whatever, we have one project about Mars, well, we cannot just bear the budget alone, so that's what we need to follow a different way to get the financing. Initially, and still today, our plan A is to try to find other broadcasters in Europe.” The exec gave an example with their new series Kabul which is a co-production with ZDF and New8. “It's a 3 million euro per episode, 6 episodes, so quite expensive for us. And that's exactly what we are looking for when we do a production, trying to find something we can finance alone. The plan B is to work with streamers, because they have a lot of money.”
The EAO 2025 report TV has identified that fiction production in Europe has reached a turning point. After a brief post-pandemic return to growth, the production and release of original TV fiction is declining. A 6% drop in the number of fiction titles produced in 2023 was mirrored by a similar reduction in the number of episodes and a stagnation in the volume of hours when compared to the previous year. On average, over 1 200 titles, 23 000 episodes and 14 000 hours1 of TV fiction are produced in Europe each year.
Considering this downward trend, a high interest in the production of shorter formats prevails. High-end TV series (3 to 13 episodes) continue to represent the most prominent TV series format: Well over half of the titles produced in 2023 were high-end TV series – a 105% increase since 2015. However, this remarkable development did not translate into a notable growth of volume of hours, as seasons had fewer and shorter episodes (probably as a way to cope with production costs and inflation). The episode duration of most TV series produced in Europe is longer than 16 minutes, typically 36 to 65 minutes. High-end TV series are crucial to the weight of new series: Around 65% of all 3-to-13-episode-per-season series titles produced in 2023 were new projects. The figure is nuanced, as a portion of these new projects were mini-series meant to last only one season.
Over half of fiction titles produced in Europe in 2023 were commissioned by public service broadcasters (55%), followed by private broadcasters (31%) and global streamers (14%). However, since private broadcasters tend to dedicate a bigger share of their commissioning to daily soaps and telenovelas, they produced a higher volume of hours (57%) than public service broadcasters (39%). Global streamers accounted for just 5% of hours as they do not invest in long-running TV series.
Co-productions made up 10% of all TV fiction titles produced in Europe in 2023. On average, over 100 TV fiction co-productions are produced in Europe each year, almost exclusively high-end TV series and TV films.
The report also notes that SVOD usage in Europe is marked by concentration. Three SVOD services (Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+) account for 85% of viewing time. The consumption of genres is also highly concentrated, with fiction works accounting for 87% and 95% of film and TV content, respectively. The consumption of films appears also mainly driven by recent titles. They account for 25% of viewing time while representing only 1% of the catalogues. SVOD viewing is almost equally split between films2 and TV content. But each segment presents quite different characteristics: film usage on SVOD is much less concentrated than TV content usage; originals commissioned by the streamers get a much more significant viewing share for TV content (close to 60%) than for films (less than 25%); whereas animation and documentary works generally account for a smaller share of viewing than their share in catalogues, the gap is wider for TV content than for films. Differences between film and TV content are even more apparent when considering the origin of works. Overall, European works account for 30% of SVOD viewing time, with a slightly higher share for films than for TV series, and a higher share for documentaries than for fiction or animation. But figures vary significantly between Spain, Italy and Poland, with more viewing dedicated to European content, and Sweden and Denmark more geared towards US works.
3 SVOD services (Netflix 53%, Prime Video 19% and Disney+ 12%) account together for 85% of viewing time.
With 12 703 audiovisual media services available throughout wider Europe,1 the European audiovisual sector is both vibrant and diverse. One in four audiovisual media services is now on demand (3 269 VOD services and video-sharing platforms). Still, the majority of services are linear, comprising 9 434 TV channels, which account for three-quarters of all audiovisual media services. Overall, the European audiovisual sector features a mix of a wide array of local players and global tech and media giants. US groups have a substantial influence on the European audiovisual sector. Nine out of 10 of the most widespread TV and VOD groups in Europe are US-based. Major US brands like Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, Netflix, and Amazon have a significant presence across multiple European markets. Around one in four (23%) of all private TV channels (excluding local TV) are US-owned and so are one in 10 (8%) of all on-demand services and videosharing platforms in Europe. US TV channel portfolios are significantly larger than European ones, with 71% of channels in the top 10 TV groups owned by five US companies. Local media services At the same time, local media services carry significant weight – 42% of TV channels in Europe are regional and local TV services. Around 71% of the Italian AV market is local channels – the equivalent of 18% of all local and regional channels in Europe. Six countries account for more than half of all local and regional TV channels – Italy, Spain, Hungary, Ukraine, the Netherlands and Germany, all of which offer more than 200 services. Availability of public channels serving local and regional audiences differs widely across Europe, ranging from more than 200 in the Netherlands to fewer than 10 in countries such as Finland, Ireland and Portugal.
While linear services offer a wide thematic range, on-demand services concentrate on entertainment and fiction, showcasing viewer preferences. With regards to ownership, the European TV market is divided into a public sector with mainly generalist programming available on DTT networks and a private sector which has expanded into thematic cable, IPTV, and satellite channels. Almost all on-demand services and VSPs are privately owned (97%). Public service media have entered the market as well, gradually expanding their catch-up services into full-fledged VOD services.
The AV market grew by 4.3% in the EU in 2023; but with inflation at 6.4%, the market actually shrank. Most of the traditional segments of the audiovisual sector are stagnating or declining in real terms: TV advertising, public funding by public service broadcasters, physical home video and box office revenues. The limited growth of the AV market is almost entirely due to two market segments: subscription and transactional video on demand.
Spending on European original content (excluding news and sports rights) reached a new high in 2023 at EUR 22 billion. After a (moderate) downturn in 2020 due to the pandemic, investments grew at a doubledigit rate in 2021 and 2022, but by only 8% in 2023, in a context of strong inflation. On the one hand, broadcasting groups’ spending was stable, meaning actually decreasing in real terms. On the other hand, global streamers, which doubled their investments in 2022, increased them by ‘only’ 34% in 2023. Overall, global streamers accounted for 26% of audiovisual service investments in European original content. This still strong increase of global streamers’ spending in Europe contrasts with the view that, globally, they put more emphasis on controlling their programming expenses. But two factors explain why Europe is still growing strongly: on the one hand, some streamers only recently started to invest in European original content (Disney+, Apple TV+, Paramount+, Max) and are still building a line-up of local content, in the context of the implementation of the investment obligations foreseen in the Audiovisual Media Services Directive. On the other hand, Europe is capturing a growing share of the streamers’ global content spending (20% in 2023 vs. 13% in 2021), as there is now more growth potential outside the US, as some European works have proven successful worldwide and as European works are cheaper to produce. Smaller countries struggle to benefit from the growth in content spending In 2023, the United Kingdom (29%) and Germany (20%) accounted for almost 50% of broadcasters’ and streamers’ investments in original European content, with France (14%), Spain (9%) and Italy (7%) joining the top five. However, the picture is somewhat different when focusing only on global streamers’ spending. Whereas the UK (35%) was again the first destination, Spain (18%) came a clear second ahead of France, Germany and Italy (11% each). Overall, while national broadcasters ensure a minimum level of national production in smaller countries, these countries seem to struggle to capture a significant share of streamers’ investments.
There were 31,000 writers and directors of films and TV/SVoD fiction between 2015-2022. However, the growth in production of European fiction series has seen writers and directors increasingly migrating to TV from film over the period. 60% of writing or directing assignments now go to TV. Once working in television, writers and directors tend to stay there as there are more work opportunities.
The share of female professionals across all job categories stands at 24% in film and 28% in television. The lowest share of female professionals is found for cinematographers and for composers. The share of women film directors stood at 25%, while female editors and producers both represented a 31% share of the workforce.
Streamers are keener on adaptations than traditional broadcasters. Some 12% of all film and TV fiction produced in Europe between 2015-22 were adaptations – the equivalent of 1,189 film and TV series. But the share was highest for streamers at 19%, compared to 13% for private and 11% for public broadcasters. The UK has the highest share of adaptations – 26% of all films and TV series are adaptations in the UK, followed by France (18%), Sweden (17%), Spain (16%) and Italy (15%).
US group Comcast, parent company of NBCUniversal and Sky, was the number one audiovisual group in Europe with €15.3bn of revenues in 2023. This was followed by Disney (€8.9bn) and Netflix (€8.1bn). Six of the top 10 AV players in Europe were represented by European groups, led by Germany’s ARD and RTL, followed by the BBC, Canal+, ITV and ProSiebenSat.1. From the US, Warner Bros Discovery was also in the top 10.
