Top 100 audiovisual businesses outpacing market in Europe

Source: Alamy.com

The top 100 audiovisual businesses in Europe grew twice as fast as the overall market and at a higher rate than inflation in 2022, according to the latest report by the European Audiovisual Observatory.

According to the Top Players in the European AV Industry: Ownership and Concentration report, the top 100 companies grew operating revenues by 23% between 2016 and 2022.

Pure SVOD players such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and DAZN saw cumulated revenues grow by a factor of six in 2022 over 2026, accounting for 40% of the top 100 players’ revenue growth.

Traditional broadcasters and pay TV operators saw their revenues grow by 14% over 2016 and accounted for about 60% of top 100 revenue growth, with Warner Bros Discovery, Paramount, Comcast’s Sky, Disney, Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom leading the charge.

Commercial players, mostly US-backed, grew twice as fast as the cumulative revenues of top 100 players. Commercial  groups cumulatively accounted for 90% of top 100 total revenue growth and drove the private sector share up to 73% in 2022.

Broadcasters took a 68% share of revenues among all privately owned  groups present among the top 100 players, followed by telecom-driven companies with 20% and pure SVOD players with 12%.

Some 63% of the top 100 ‘s revenues was accounted for by European-backed players in 2022, 78% of which were to broadcasters and the rest to telecom groups.

European players Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, Telia, RTL, Telefonica, PPF, Bouygues, the BBC, ITV and Canal+ cumulatively accounted for over 55% of incremental revenues registered between 2016 and 2022.

The top five European-backed groups made up one third of the European share of revenues in 2022, RTL and ARD led with 8% each, followed by the BBC with 7%, Canal+ with 6% and ITV with 5%.

US players increased their share of the top 100’s revenues, up by 5% from 2016 to 36% in 2022. Comcast-owned Sky accounted for one third of revenues for US-backed players. However, the gain in market share was mostly due to organic growth. Some 70% was to broadcasters and 25% was for pure SVOD players.

The top10 groups by revenue were Comcast/Sky, Netflix, Disney, RTL, ARD, the BBC, Canal+, Warner Bros. Discovery and ITV.