Central Europe will gain 5 million SVOD subscriptions in 2022 alone

This year is marking a significant milestone for the OTT ecosystem in Central Europe. An estimated 5 million new paid subscriptions on VOD services will be activated during 2022. This uptake is largely attributed to the launch of two major services in the region this summer: HBO Max, which replaces HBO Go launched at the end 2017, and Disney+, as part of the platform’s latest wave of rollouts. According to the latest market insights, both platforms are seemingly benefitting from a generally favourable uptake of SVOD in Central European households, despite an increasingly stronger competition and uncertain economic circumstances. The clear market leader in the region is Netflix, which passed the 5 million subscribers bar in the region this year, and will likely achieve a 15% yearly growth rate by the end of 2022. The company announced in March that it will open an office in Poland, the biggest market of the region, to pursue its investments in local content. The streamer previously revealed that it invested 490 million zloty (€105 million) in Polish content production between 2020 and 2021. The increased attention put by Netflix on localizing its platform and its content proposition has proven successful in the last years, with Central Europe representing an estimated 6.4% of its subscriber base across EMEA markets at mid 2022. That’s almost 3 points higher than 2 years prior. HBO reaches second on the podium, with a strong leap in subscriptions expected after the rebranding of its streaming service into HBO Max. HBO Go was already a well installed-player, with numerous distribution partnerships established with local telcos and pay TV operators like United Group, Orange, Vodafone, A1 or Deutsche Telekom to name but a few. In the Western Balkans, where HBO has a dedicated entity and bundles its service with virtually all available TV packages, the platform has an even higher market share. The future of the service is nevertheless unclear after the merger between WarnerBros and Discovery, and the new group already put a halt to original productions in Europe. HBO Max also announced in October that its rollout in the Baltics and Eastern Balkan markets (Greece and Turkey) is cancelled. The latest up-and-coming OTT player in the region is obviously Disney+, which is expected to become part of the leading top 3 platforms in Central Europe right after its launch last June. This is not to undermine the growing popularity and undeniable success of homegrown platforms like Voyo, which just announced it reached 400k subscribers in Czech and Slovakia alone, and Go3 in the Baltics, which passed the 300k subscribers bar at the end of 2021. If we take a look at the industry on a country level, Poland is...