How Saudi media group MBC's Shahid has become the biggest streaming service in MENA with a 22% market share, ahead of Starz Play Arabia's 18% and Netflix's 17%
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Context & Ripple Effects
Shahid’s lead adds another example of a regional streaming platform holding off global operators: Showmax led Netflix in African subscribers in Omdia’s late-2023 snapshot.
The pattern also has a longer precedent in India, where Hotstar commanded a far larger on-demand share than Amazon and Netflix. The MENA ranking matters because it places a Saudi media group at the center of a closely contested three-player market.
First-order effects
- Shahid becomes the MENA market leader at 22%, establishing a four-point lead over Starz Play Arabia and a five-point lead over Netflix.
- Starz Play Arabia and Netflix are immediately positioned as challengers rather than the region’s default streaming leader.
Second-order effects
- The narrow gap among the top three raises competitive pressure on all three services to protect or win subscriber share, making MENA a more consequential battleground for their programming and distribution choices.
- Shahid’s result gives MBC a stronger market-positioning advantage when competing for audiences and commercial partners against the two established rivals.
Third-order effects
- If regional leaders continue to prevail across distinct markets, streaming competition will look less like a single global winner-take-most contest and more like a set of locally contested markets.
- The outcome reinforces that global scale alone does not determine regional streaming leadership; local platforms can remain durable gatekeepers for audiences and partners.
The trend: Streaming is fragmenting into regional contests in which locally rooted services can lead global platforms in their home markets.