Nearly half of all Dutch households (47%) subscribed to a SVOD service at the end of 2020 and more than one in five (22%) subscribed to two or more of the services, according to the latest research by Telecompaper. Supported by more entertainment at home due to the coronavirus restrictions and the launch of new streaming services, the overall market for pay-TV and video services in the Netherlands grew 8 percent in 2020 to a value of nearly EUR 2.5 billion.
SVOD services alone grew by 39 percent in 2020 to revenues of over half a billion euros. The TVOD market, for one-off movie rentals, became more popular as well as cinemas closed for several months, and nearly doubled in value. By Q4 2020, SVOD accounted for nearly a quarter of the market value, and TVOD almost 6 percent of revenues.
Basic pay-TV subscriptions still make up the bulk of the market, at almost EUR 1.3 billion, but showed little growth in 2020. Annual price increases just offset a 1 percent drop in the number of Dutch TV subscribers last year to 7.3 million, according to Telecompaper’s latest reports.
This means the TV providers’ share of the market revenues fell to 77.4 percent in 2020 from 83.6 percent a year earlier, while internet companies added nearly 4 percent points for a 17.5 percent share of revenues. The remaining 5 percent went to broadcasters offering VoD services.
Almost 10% of households don’t have TV subscription
The penetration of traditional pay-TV services fell to an estimated 90.5 percent of households at the end of 2020 from 92.2 percent a year earlier. Among those without a TV provider, just over half had cancelled their subscription (cord-cutters) and the remainder never had pay-TV services (cord-nevers), data from the Telecompaper Consumer Insights panel shows. While most SVOD services are slightly more popular in households without traditional TV, the differences with the wider population remain fairly small.
Across all households, the most popular SVOD services with the highest subscriber numbers are Netflix, RTL’s Videoland and Disney+, followed by NPO Plus and Amazon Prime Video. More households are also taking more than one streaming service, with the most popular combinations Netflix with Videoland (16% of SVOD subscribers) and Netflix with Disney+ (7%).
"The demand for home entertainment during the pandemic clearly provided a boost to the TV-video market in 2020, and revenue growth accelerated," said Tim Poulus, Telecompaper research analyst and co-author of the report Dutch TV-Video market Q4 2020. "As we pass the one-year mark though, some of the streaming services may find it difficult to maintain the high growth and hold on to customers. We expect more ‘normal’ growth rates in the second half of 2021 when restrictions on movement start to ease."
The above figures come from Telecompaper’s continuous research into the communications market and the most recent editions of the reports ‘Dutch TV Market’, ‘Dutch TV-Video Market’ and ‘Video Behaviour of Dutch consumers’. The latter is based on the Telecompaper Consumer Insights panel, which every month surveys at least 5,000 consumers on their use of telecom and video services. The reports are available for purchase on the Telecompaper website; for more information or a customised analysis, please contact research@telecompaper.com.
