Cross-national report on European VOD platforms

The rapid growth of the VOD market has been a key aspect in the transformation of the European Film Industry (EFI) in the last decades. This report addresses this phenomenon and focuses on the recent examples provided by Spain and Poland, where two important national industries have developed especially in the last 15 years as part of the transformation of a still very diverse European market.

Rather than a direct comparison between both countries, the report offers a contextualization of specific case studies and illuminates the different alternatives they present regarding the national implementation of EU policies and its specific effects for the question of competitiveness of the European film industry. Despite the impact of EU policies in the last three decades, the European VOD landscape remains highly fragmented (Ranaivoson et al., 2023) while at the same time under general, strong dominance of US-based VOD providers.

The study follows a qualitative approach a) to trace the historical transformation of the streaming market, and b) to study the evolution of the EU legislative dispositions for audiovisual content and its impact on the Polish and Spanish legal frameworks. On a further level of analysis, the report combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies to c) provide a content assessment of the catalogue of three selected platforms in each country, especially regarding the presence of European audiovisual works following the implementation of EU policies.

In Poland the analysis covers two major global providers (Netflix and Disney+), as well as the public broadcaster VOD.TVP.pl. In Spain, the analysis focuses on one of the main US platforms, HBO (now MAX), given that, in contrast to the Polish case, it is headquartered in Spain. It also covers the evolution of a Spanish player whose origin was in the film industry, Filmin (ranked currently fifth in market share and user numbers) and Atresplayer, the VOD service from the private broadcaster Antena 3. In both national contexts, the analysis is supported by in-depth interviews with experts on the VOD market and from the indicated companies.