As SkyShowtime finishes its European rollout and expands its local content, it has become the first-ever service to produce over 10 new original local language shows within the first year while slowly incorporating both Sky and Showtime content. Using Show Tracker, we have been able to detail its content catalogue across Europe, identifying some minor variances in its content across various markets.
When Paramount Global and Comcast launched their joint venture SkyShowtime (Which replaced Paramount+) in the Nordics last year, it was described as a Europe-only exclusive service which consolidated content from two premium brands in the form of Sky (Comcast) and Showtime (Paramount). The service was essentially created to feature an all-star content catalogue in the form of blockbuster movie titles from Universal and Paramount Pictures, while also offering a list of premium scripted shows from Paramount+, Showtime, Sky Studios, Peacock, Etc.
The service, now almost a year old, has been rolled out to all the 22 intended European markets and is now trying to appeal to the 90 million or so potential customers that Paramount and Comcast have estimated. But the original intention of creating the service (apart from combining catalogues) was to put a joint foot forward in competing against Global SVOD services that dominate the region. It is no secret that services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ are expanding their originals library while cutting down on third party acquisitions, with all three services having around 30% of their content library be of European origin.
SkyShowtime is also in the process of following a similar strategy to attract more attention to their platform as they have recently announced that 10 new original European shows are set to be premiered in 2023 with more coming next year. The first of these shows titled Codename: Anika will premiere in the Nordics later this year. They’ve also recently struck a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery for exclusive rights to 21 HBO Max European originals out of which three will premiere as SkyShowtime originals. Some of these shows which include Beartown and Beforeigners were removed from HBO Max last year citing cost reasons and they’ve now found a new home thanks to this deal.
Looking at the first window services of all the shows that have been acquired as a second window in four SkyShowtime markets (Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden), it is clear that Warner has always been involved in one way or the other with Paramount content (Over 50% of the 2nd window shows on SkyShowtime had their first window premieres on HBO Max). In some European markets, HBO Max was the home of Showtime content until early last year after which most of these shows were saved for SkyShowtime. Over 70% of these second window shows were commissioned by Paramount-owned services with about 50% alone being commissioned by SkyShowtime.
Looking at the number of shows commissioned (& co-commissioned) by Comcast and Paramount-owned services (144 and 182 respectively), there does seem to be a variance in the numbers available on SkyShowtime in the four markets mentioned earlier. Only a fraction of the Sky shows have made it onto the service whereas the majority of vertically integrated content is Paramount-owned. This could be due to the fact that Sky content still exists on some Sky-owned services in Spain, whereas HBO Max still has the rights to most of these shows in Sweden and a lot of them have yet to have any premieres in markets like Poland and the Netherlands.
The variance also exists in the number of unique shows present in each market with Sweden having the highest amount of shows not present in any of the other three markets. The Netherlands does not have any unique shows which could be due to the fact that it is the only one of the four markets that did not have Paramount+ or a Paramount owned service present before the launch of SkyShowtime. This can also explain why all of the shows present on the service are first window acquisitions.
These variances in the content catalogue of SkyShowtime will eventually fix themselves as the service continues to grow, but SkyShowtime as a whole looks to be in great shape considering the number of blockbuster movies that are set to premiere exclusively on the SVOD in the upcoming months. With a few original premium scripted shows joining the service at the end of this year and more to come in 2024, the affordable price point is sure to make the service look very desirable for potential customers. The aggressive expansion and active commitment to the service will likely help them get closer to their ultimate goal of carving out a sizeable portion of the European streaming market.
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