Scarce and recent: this is Spanish content on international platforms

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A report carried out by researchers from the Carlos III University of Madrid analyzes the availability of Spanish production on five of the main international subscription video-on-demand platforms that operate in Spain.

The study, entitled

Availability and prominence of Spanish works in subscription audiovisual services

and signed by Luis A. Albornoz, Mª Trinidad García Leiva and Pedro Gallo, analyzes the offer of Spanish series and films on Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max and Apple TV+, the five services of American origin with the greatest penetration in Spain at the time this analysis was carried out, at the beginning of 2023. The main conclusion they draw is that the five include Spanish works in their catalogs, although their quantity and characteristics vary considerably.

Together, they offer 1,641 Spanish titles (including co-productions, especially with France and Argentina), of which 187 are in two or more catalogues.

Prime Video is the platform that offers the largest number of Spanish works, with a total of 751 different titles.

Netflix follows, with 575. Between them, they represent 80% of Spanish series and movies on the five platforms.

Apple TV+ only had three titles at the beginning of 2023, three co-productions (a short, an animated feature, and the

Now & Then

series ).

HBO Max, with 196 titles, and Disney+, with 116, were in the middle positions.

The numbers are very different, but so is the total number of titles offered by these platforms.

While Netflix exceeds 7,000 titles in its catalog, Apple TV+ remains at 150 (it only has original production, not a complete library of purchased titles, as the others do).

Prime Video is also the platform that has the highest proportion of Spanish work: 15% of its total offer in Spain in 2023 had Spanish origin.

HBO Max is next, with 12%.

On Netflix it is close to 8%, on Disney+ it is 5% and on Apple TV+ it remains at 2%.

The study highlights the “strong mutability of catalogs depending on the intellectual property rights of the works.”

If the data for 2023 is compared with that of January 2022, all platforms have increased their offer of Spanish titles.

Disney+ is the one that grows the most in Spanish works in proportion, but, as the report points out, this did not respond to a commitment to production in Spain, but to the acquisition of exhibition rights for already existing works.

The researchers detected nine fiction films that are in all the catalogs analyzed (except Apple TV+), all productions from large national media groups.

And in series, there were five titles available in at least three catalogs simultaneously:

No one lives here, Physics or chemistry, The boat, Pocoyó

and

Vis a vis.

Regarding the year of production, the content from the 2010s stands out. Spanish films and series produced before the 1990s are very limited or, in some cases, non-existent.

This is explained by several factors, such as the concentration of exhibition rights for Spanish films in the company Mercury Films (owner of FlixOlé), the public television monopoly until 1990, which means that legendary series such as

Curro Jiménez

or

Verano azul

are on RTVE. Play (and other services with which they have agreements), or that many productions are not digitized or do not have adequate image quality.

The oldest title they found on these platforms was

Welcome, Mr. Marshall

(1953), on HBO Max (now it is also on Netflix).

Little featured on their menus

An important conclusion of the report by the Carlos III University researchers is that these platforms still have a large room for improvement when it comes to highlighting the presence of this content in their catalog and, therefore, facilitating its access.

Netflix was the only one that had sections dedicated to Spanish movies and series in the top navigation bar or the carousels on the home page.

Prime Video also includes carousels with categories dedicated to Spanish films and series, and HBO Max included it in a joint category.

The study concludes that “the Spanish work available in the SVOD services considered is scarce, not very prominent and mostly skewed towards films and fiction in Spanish.”

To give context, the report states that, according to the MAVISE database of the European Audiovisual Observatory, in mid-2023 there were 86 video-on-demand audiovisual services in Spain.

It also recalls that the Audiovisual Communication Services Directive includes that EU States must ensure that “providers of audiovisual communication services [...] have a percentage of at least 30% of European works in their catalogues.” and guarantee the prominence of said works.”

This directive was translated in Spain into a new General Law of Audiovisual Communication in 2022 that stipulates the reservation of European works of at least 30% of the catalogues, in addition to establishing that, at least, 50% of that quota be dedicated to works in Spanish or in one of the co-official languages.

Furthermore, Spanish law establishes that any provider of an audiovisual service in Spain with income equal to or greater than 50 million euros must annually allocate 5% of its income to the financing of European audiovisual work.

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