According to Digital TV Research, western European subscription video on-demand (SVOD) revenues will increase to $6.5 billion by 2022, up from $2.8 billion in 2016. SVOD became the region's largest over-the-top (OTT) video revenue source in 2016 by overtaking ad-supported VOD (AVOD). SVOD's share of OTT revenues are expected to continue to grow.
OTT TV episode and movie revenues for 18 western European countries are expected to reach $14.65 billion in 2022; more than double the $6.90 billion recorded in 2016. Revenues are expected to climb by $1.69 billion in 2017 alone.
Digital TV Research forecasts 65.07 million SVOD subscribers by 2022, up from 33.96 million by end-2016. About 10.69 million subscribers were added in 2017.
Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV Research, said: "These are gross SVOD subscriptions where one household can pay for more than one platform. Multiple SVOD subscriptions are already popular in Scandinavia and the UK. However, SVOD subscriber growth will be much more modest in countries such as France, Italy and Spain. In fact, Sweden will have more SVOD subscribers than Spain in 2022, despite only having a quarter of the population."
By 2022, 37.1% of Western European TV households are expected to subscribe to an SVOD platform, up from 19.7% at end-2016. Germany, Italy, France and Spain are all expected to still be under the regional average by 2022.
"SVOD penetration is higher the further North that you travel," Murray said. "This has nothing to do with the weather or beer-drinking countries vs. wine-drinking ones. Penetration will be particularly high in the Scandinavian countries, which have high pay TV, broadband and smartphone penetration. There are also plenty of platforms on offer."
Netflix is expected to remain the largest pan-regional SVOD platform by some distance, with an expected 29.61 million paying subscribers in 2022, or 46% of the region's total (down from a 55% share in 2016). Amazon Prime Video is expected to be the second largest platform by 2022, with 15 million paying subscribers.