Disney may look to drop its partnerships with IPTV companies after research found they are not driving a significant number of viewers to sign up for the streamer.
In a report looking at European TV and video subscription platforms, the analysts state that they understand 85 per cent of Disney Plus’ subscribers have signed up directly.
It found that platforms with exclusive launch deals including Canal Plus, Deutsche Telekom, TIM and Movistar+ displayed no noticeable lift, which Enders suggests implies the exclusive Disney Plus’ partnerships for IPTV on the continent had limited impact.
The report also takes a deep dive into European territories and other SVoD bundles. It said that in France the spread of distribution deals between SVoD services and ISPs and Canal Plus has helped Netflix and Amazon to accelerate penetration growth.
Germany is seeing a fragmenting SVoD market states the report, consolidation and aggregation dominate the German agenda, with domestic providers jostling to come out on top. RTL owner Bertelsmann has called on regulators to allow consolidation of commercial TV to create ‘national champions’. Assuming agreements were found with public channels, “consumers could find all German content through a single interface, leveraging massive demand for local programmes to reach a scale matching that of US SVoD providers,” said the report.
Scandinavia is at the vanguard of the digital transition in Europe said the report, with 64 per cent of Swedes living in SVoD homes. Netflix dominates the subscription market with 4 million accounts at end-2019, half of them in Sweden, ahead of HBO Nordic (estimated 2.5 million). Amazon Prime has reportedly very low penetration. Netflix and HBO are bundled on most telecom platforms.
