Entertainment on Demand study in Germany uncovers the following behaviours within the Subscription Video on Demand (SVoD) market over the three months to June 2022:
- Between April to June 2022, the number of VoD-enabled households that subscribed to at least one video service in Germany grew to 21.9million, up 610k, quarter on quarter, representing 53% of homes, versus 51.3% in the first quarter of 2022.
- Almost one third (32%) of SVoD subscriptions taken out in the quarter were by households who were new to the SVoD category, whilst one in five German homes) 21%) cancelled an existing subscription to replace it with another provider.
- The average SVoD enabled household has 3.0 subscriptions, up +0.2 vs. last quarter
- Stranger Things was the most enjoyed title in Q2, followed by Money Heist and The Blacklist, completing Netflix’s domination of top titles in the quarter.
Star Wars powered Disney+ growth
After a period of sustained low growth, the German SVoD market picked up pace in the second quarter of the year.
Disney+ attracted growth in the quarter from its Star Wars franchise, with 45% of new Disney+ joiners citing ‘wanting to watch a specific TV series/film’ as their key motivator. Of these content-driven subscribers, Star Wars content, including the release of Obi-Wan Kenobi, accounted for 49% of new subscribers.
Disney+ also saw an increase in engagement in its subscriber base, with the proportion of high engagement users climbing to an all-time high of 17.1%, up from 14.6% a year ago.
This increase in engagement also helped Disney+ to overtake Amazon Prime Video in overall subscriber advocacy, rounding off an excellent quarter for the service.
Amazon Prime closes in on half of German households
The proportion of German households subscribing to Amazon Prime rose to a record 49.3%, whilst at the same time Amazon managed to ensure it also increased the proportion of those using Prime Video. In contrast to the market as a whole, Amazon Prime Video is increasing the proportion of its subscribers who have Prime Video as their only video streaming subscription, up from 33% last year to 35% in Q2 2022. This trend comes as Prime Video is managing to increase the number of ‘Gateway’ subscribers it attracts, those entering the SVoD market for the first ever time.
Netflix dominated the top three most enjoyed SVoD titles over the quarter, with Stranger Things taking top spot and helping Netflix to 2nd place in share of new SVoD adds in the quarter.
Commuting is back
As Germans continue to return to the office post-COVID restrictions, a steady increase in the numbers of those consuming SVoD content on their commute can be observed. In Q2’21 just 4.3% of Germans used their SVoD subscriptions whilst commuting, but this has since steadily increased to 5.8% in the latest quarter. However, usage across services while out of the home is not equal. In fact, just 4.7% of Netflix subscribers use the service whilst commuting, compared to 13.2% of AppleTV+ subscribers and 6.1% of WOW (Sky Ticket) subscribers. As competition in the sector increases and consumers are looking for ever greater value from their spend as inflation rises, out-of-home opportunities for viewing are an important route for growth.
Access the interactive data visualisation tool to explore current and historical SVoD market data.
