This year sales activity to third parties from US studios continue to gain traction. The walled gardens built on their SVOD services have started to open up bit by bit, first with library content finding its way onto other services and now with the second window. Show Tracker reveals a detailed breakdown of these specific deals.
Disney has found reliable local buyers for titles that effectively act as Disney+ Originals in international markets. In Canada, CBC Gem has been especially active, acquiring two miniseries - ‘Fleishman is in Trouble’ and ‘Tiny Beautiful Things’. It also premiered all three seasons of ‘Reservation Dogs’ between July and September. Bell Media’s Crave similarly acquired Reservation Dogs, adding all three seasons at once to its SVOD Crave platform.
The show's commitment to Indigenous representation, both on and off-screen, has likely heightened its appeal to Canadian audiences, driving demand high enough for both Bell and CBC to acquire it in the second window without exclusivity. All seasons of the show remain available on Disney+ in Canada, meaning that three different services now offer the show.
Non-exclusivity has been a common feature in all of Disney’s second-window deals this year. In every case, titles remain available to Disney+ subscribers, with the exception of Pistol in Latin America, which was removed from Disney+ across all markets as part of Disney’s 2023 strategy to write down the value of its content assets.
Largely anglophone markets like Canada account for over 60% of these acquisitions. In the UK, BBC’s linear channels, alongside ITV’s AVOD service ITVX, have taken Disney titles in the second window. For example, ‘Extraordinary’ premiered on ITVX shortly before its second season debuted on Disney+. In Australia, activity has focused on SBS On Demand, where Disney’s second-window titles are supplementing its digital catalog.
Australia stands out for Paramount, which has mainly been selling to the local SVOD service Stan.
Paramount’s strategy contrasts with Disney’s in that it does not insist on keeping its licensed second-window titles on the original platform. All titles sold to Stan in Australia (‘Interrogation’, ‘I Love that for You’, ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’) were removed from Paramount+, making Stan the exclusive place to watch them. In fact, less than half of the titles Paramount licensed in 2024 have remained on their originating SVOD service.
Both Paramount and Disney are granting more catch-up rights than in previous sales of SVOD content. In the past, when Netflix and Amazon were acquiring first-window content to boost their original catalogs outside the US, distributors often limited second-window buyers to 30-day catch-up rights.
Although there may still be pressure to keep content within the walled gardens, especially for studios’ SVOD stakeholders, these deals represent an important step in making SVOD services profitable. This is happening alongside broader strategies such as ad-tiers and password-sharing crackdowns. Disney has also been notably open to selling its movies to third parties. As this activity grows across all studios, they may find that it ultimately boosts their subscriber counts, as users who discover content in the second window might convert into subscribers to access more.