The European Audiovisual Observatory (OAS) has compiled a report on consumption trends for subscription television services on demand (‘Video on Demand’ or VOD) in 2020 in the European Union, compiled by that body, and which identify a change in the consumption of audiovisual content with the entry of new operators, such as streaming platforms.

According to the OAS, the three most relevant VOD operators in the Portuguese market are Netflix (47 percent), AppleTV (21 percent) and Amazon (13 percent).

Referring to 2019, the report also indicates that 22 out of every 100 Portuguese households had access to at least one subscription television service; slightly above the European Union average of 18 out of 100.

Despite this indicator, revenues from VOD services in Portugal represented in 2019 only 1.1 percent of the total national audiovisual market, placing it in last place, in a ‘ranking’ led by Denmark, with 14.8 percent.

Overall, the report indicates that those services from new entrants in the European area generated €11.6 billion of revenue in 2020, some 30 times more than in 2010, the year in which €388.8 million of revenue were generated.

Among all the new operators operating in Europe, Netflix led the market in 2020, with €5.3 billion in revenue and 54.4 million subscribers in 28 countries, followed by Amazon Prime Video with €910 million of revenue and 29 million subscribers.

The data has been released at a time when the European Union is making a legislative transition over audiovisual to standardise and regulate, among all Member States, the offer of audiovisual media services, which includes pay-TV channels, sharing platforms videos, such as Youtube, and audiovisual services on request.

In Portugal, the legislation, which comes into force this month, but still lacks regulation, provides, for example, that those operators are subject to “the payment of an annual fee corresponding to 1 percent of the amount of the relevant income of these operators”.

The proceeds from the collection of this new fee will revert to the Instituto do Cinema e Audiovisual (ICA). If it is not possible to determine the value of the relevant income of these operators, “it is assumed that the annual fee is €1 million”.