Western Europe Set to Overtake North America as Second-Largest Streaming Market by 2024
As most of the top streaming platforms in the world are headquartered in North America, it’s reasonable to assume that’s where streaming’s largest audiences reside. But according to new data released by the media data interpretation firm Ampere Analysis, the North American streaming audience is set to fall to third-largest by 2024.
Western Europe is the region that will supplant North America as the second-largest streaming audience in the world next year. Growth in the United Kingdom and Germany will drive the number of European homes with at least one streaming service to well over 100 million, leaving Western Europe behind only Asia as the world’s second-biggest streaming market.
Streaming audiences are becoming increasingly international, and content producers are rushing to meet them where they are. Less than 50% of Netflix originals are now produced in the United States, and other streamers are following suit. Prime Video debuted fewer American-made original movies than internationally-made titles for the third year in a row in 2022, and these trends will only increase as non-American streaming audiences grow.
The numbers from Ampere also show that as audiences shift to new markets, so will revenues. North America will generate less than half of global streaming revenues by 2024 for the first time, as Europe, Asia and other markets continue to add subscribers and boost their own numbers.
“Streaming saturation in North America is the primary driver for reduced growth,” said Ampere executive director Guy Bisson. “Other world regions still have headroom for new customers, both in terms of customers entirely new to streaming and in the number of services taken in each home. North America also losing its place as the largest revenue generating region can only accelerate the existing trend for focusing content investment on key growth markets having long-term implications for the U.S. production sectors and for inward investment into Asia and Europe.”
Bisson’s point about the state of the North American streaming market is right on the money. A recent survey found that half of all streaming subscribers in the U.S. have either canceled or are considering canceling a subscription because the costs have simply risen to high. There simply aren’t that many users in North America who want to get into streaming but haven’t yet, and there’s a much larger number of customers that have too many services and need to cut back.