After the recent period of studios favouring a pipeline of Vertically Integrated TV Series to their own services it’s looking like they are starting to come back to monetising their content through content sales whilst sometimes supporting D2C initiatives. They are working out the sequencing, usage and exclusivity of their shows between their own service and third parties. Alongside this streamers like Netflix and Amazon are showing financial restraint and looking towards more simple acquisitions to supplement their expensive originals. One of the most straightforward ways Show Tracker can look at this is through second window sales which is a market that has seen some flux in the past few years.
SVOD dominated the second window after studio services between 2016 and 2022, as the likes of Netflix and Amazon remained active buyers, this however has started to change in the last few years as these services buy less in the second window. SVOD still has taken a significant proportion of second windows in the past two years even if its colossal share has been reduced to just under 60%. Established deals in markets help contribute to this, with Paramount titles for instance in Australia typically having a second window on the local SVOD service Stan after a debut on Paramount+.
Also evident from the past two years is the growth in Pay TV platforms having access to these studio second windows, while around half of these are actually vertically integrated themselves it’s still three times the proportion of studio second windows that used to be available to Pay TV platforms. With increases to both AVOD and Free TV as well with large amounts to third party services this may be the beginnings of the shift into both of them acquiring market proven content and utilising it on their more accessible platforms.
Disney has been the most active in recent years in the second window, even while all studios start to license more of their library content to third parties. Disney have always had some second window activity with less popular TV Series but notable sales like ‘The Dropout’ to BBC One, ‘Under the Banner of Heaven’ and ‘Extraordinary’ on ITVX and shows their willingness to sell bigger TV Series even just a year after their original release on Disney+. These sales can be well timed for Disney, as the second window of ‘Extraordinary’ on ITVX could also serve as an advertisement for the new season arriving soon after on Disney+.
An example of similar behaviour from Warner was the January airing of ‘House of the Dragon’ on Prosieben and Joyn in Germany showing the change in tactics from Warner to utilise one of their flagship shows in the second window like this. Paramount have also sold a few Studio second windows but primarily to Pay TV platforms and on average around two years after the Premiere on Paramount+ or SkyShowtime. The rest of the studios primarily still license their second windows to SVOD services or to themselves.
As production costs and demand for content stay as high as ever it may well be that Studios look to more third parties in the second window to maximise the revenue of the TV Series they currently have as streamer exclusives, opening the door to local services to supplement their catalogues. In many cases, they are able to have the best of both worlds, licensing series out to second window buyers while keeping them on their first window home at the same time.
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