EAO: global streamers spent €4.9B on European original content in 2022, up 70% YoY; Netflix spent €2.2B, Amazon €1.1B, Disney €500M, and HBO and Apple €400M
Scott Roxborough / The Hollywood Reporter : See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
The 2022 total extends a longer buildout of European production: Netflix had already targeted roughly $1B for regional originals in 2018 through its planned multilingual European slate. It also fits the broader rise in streamer content budgets, while Amazon's companywide 2022 content outlay reached $16.6B in its reported content-spending increase.
First-order effects
- European producers, crews, and rights holders gain a substantially larger pool of streamer commissioning money, led by Netflix's €2.2B and Amazon's €1.1B allocations.
- Netflix and Amazon immediately widen their spending lead over Disney, HBO, and Apple in European originals, making local programming a more important competitive input.
Second-order effects
- Rival streamers face pressure to secure distinctive local projects or risk a thinner regional catalog against the two largest buyers.
- More simultaneous demand for European originals can intensify competition for production capacity and sought-after projects, raising the opportunity cost of keeping titles exclusive.
Third-order effects
- If this spending pattern persists, European production becomes a core arena for global streaming competition rather than a peripheral source of local catalog.
- The market may become more concentrated around platforms able to sustain large, recurring commissioning budgets, while independent producers gain more potential buyers but face greater dependence on a small group of global services.
The trend: Global streamers are shifting from importing programming into Europe to competing for locally made originals at increasingly industrial scale.