Content is driving platform growth
Consumer expenditure on entertainment content is poised to reach US$439 billion globally by 2021 according to research from Futuresource Consulting. The latest Global Entertainment Content Outlook report calculates that this would represent a 17% increase from 2017. TV and video accounts for the lion's share of this consumer spend, and subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu are rapidly dominating the overall home video entertainment sector including DVD, Blu-ray, EST, VOD and SVOD.
"2017 was the year that annual SVOD spend exceeded worldwide spend on packaged media," said Global Entertainment Content Outlook author Tristan Veale, market analyst at Futuresource Consulting. Veale forecast that by 2021 SVOD will account for 70% of total home video spend with households taking multiple services instrumental in the growth of this sector.
The significant growth has accelerated from 2013 when SVOD was just 13% of home video consumer spend and by 2017 comprised almost half of the US$42 billion spent worldwide.
Content remains as one of the main differentiating factors and spend to secure exclusive rights continues to soar placing added pressure on operator's margins.
Veale said that this is compounded by the increased competition stemming from a growing number of online platforms that includes Netflix and Amazon and increasingly the likes of Facebook and Twitter, all of which have significant war chests for content acquisitions. “Combined, the FAANG companies are looking to spend around $20 billion on video content in 2018," she said.
Meanwhile, at the opening conference of MIPTV in Cannes, Eurodata revealed that there is strong regional disparities in content consumption.
Analysing over 95 countries for the “One TV Year in the World” report, Eurodata found that the global individual viewing time for television stood at 2 hours and 56 minutes. However, this figure did conceal strong disparities between the continents: from Asia with just 2 hours and 25 minutes to North America which ranked highest with 4 hours and 3 minutes. Europe followed closely behind with 3 hours and 49 minutes per person daily.
“Combined across the 35 countries where they are measured, catch-up and time-shifted viewing on average add 8% to the audience figures for TV content,” said FrédéricVaulpré, Vice- President of Eurodata TV Worldwide. Young adults, whose viewing time trends are closely scrutinised across the globe, are the biggest adopters of these new usages as a proportion of their total consumption: catch-up and time-shifted viewing accounted for 11% of their consumption. Significantly, the type of content that is viewed the most via internet screens and catch-up is specifically addressed at millennials.
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