A bright future for video on demand. This is the result of the ITMedia Report for the period 2018-2021, which predicted an average annual growth rate of 12%.
In the UK, 43% of households have at least one subscription to streaming video on demand services. Although it is true that the growth in the rest of Western Europe is a little slower, it is also true that, according to the ITMedia Report, in the next 4 years the penetration percentage of on demand services is bound to increase by 12%: it will raise from 6.2 to 8.8 billion euros.
The growth will mainly involve video on demand streaming services, namely Netflix and Amazon platforms, flat rate services with access to the entire catalogue. To this respect, Amazon also linked its Svod options to its e-commerce.
Since last year, video streaming services gained a foothold mainly in the UK, in Germany and in France. In Italy, the penetration of video on demand in 2018 is of 10% and in 2021 will almost double, reaching 18%, according to the ITMedia Report. The data in the report are worrisome, especially for traditional pay-tv: the choice to give up expensive packages in favor of the news services low costs will affect more and more Italians.
In Germany, the anti-Netflix match has already begun: the German broadcaster ProSiebenSat, for example, has aligned itself with Discovery, extending the invitation to RTL, Ard and Zdf. Regarding the Italian market, the Minister of Economic Development Luigi Di Maio, on the Movimento Cinque Stelle’s blog, appealed to the two major national broadcasters, Rai and Mediaset, to join forces against OTT platforms.
