In this year’s survey we once again asked our global network of industry executives for their views on what to expect from 2022. Topics covered in this year’s survey include TV production, Free and Pay TV innovation, D2C and Global Streamer prospects, local production, SVOD development, AVOD, FAST and content windowing.
Asia Market Potential Growth
Asia continues to remain the key market for expected growth in 2022, with 46% of respondents believing the region will see the highest level of growth in 2022. This was exactly in line with 2021’s expectations of the region. Areas which have seen an increase in the level of expected growth compared to last year include North American with 18% of total responses believing the area will experience the most growth in 2022 compared to 16% in 2021, and South America with 9% in 2022 compared to 7% in 2021.
Drama Production
For two years running now respondents believe the levels of production will continue to grow through 2022. This year 68% of total respondents believed production levels will continue to grow compared to 64% last year. This perhaps alludes to the high levels of competition we’re seeing across the TV market globally as more and more players release new services thus resulting in more and more consumers demanding more original content. In the past year we have seen a growing level of investment in infrastructure, with studios being bough-out or built, alluding to higher of level of production this year too. The boom in streaming has been fuelled especially by cable networks themselves, as more assets once meant for cable to news SVOD services. Discovery+ alone accounted for 169 shows this year.
Global Streamer Prospects
In terms of what our respondents ranked the Number 1 service Disney+ decisively took the lead, with Netflix and Amazon Prime Video coming behind. Admittedly, Disney+ rollout into new markets was a huge success story for the company, rolling out far more efficiently than competitors like HBO Max. The slate of content released, the IP and just how omnipresent Disney has become in TV has been extremely significant in the past few years, so it should not come as a surprise it takes our respondents first place. In second place we have the established players Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, with the former, although facing a plateau in subscriber growth, having a stellar year in terms of content and buzz generated with shows such as Squid Game, You and even movies like Don’t Look Up!
Local Content
2021 was a defining year for localised content with the success of Squid Game representing a huge leap forward for localised international content. Our respondents comfortably believe the hunger for localised content is not slowing down with just over half of respondents believing that local content will result in global streamers becoming more attractive as co-production partners for local players. Rightly so, localised content internationally has grown larger and larger in terms of budgets and global streamers see it as a key strategy to penetrate a specific market they are interested in. Respondents also revealed how they believe local content must be the number one development area for global SVOD players, going to show how important local content is becoming as competition between streamers grows.
AVOD
Moving on to AVOD we asked respondents which type of AVOD seems to be most strongly positioned for the new year 2022. Our respondents strongly felt specialist AVOD services, such as Pluto are positioned best for 2022. Respondents still felt unsure about FAST channels compared to specialist AVOD services with FAST coming behind AVOD specialists in terms of stronger growth this year. Last came BVOD services with a majority of respondents not recognising the potential of the category for the new year to come. Over the past year we noticed more AVOD services acquiring new shows and movies, whereas BVOD seems to be retracting from its digital exclusive space. However, it remains to be seen whether AVOD can maintain its fantastic growth, even if there has been more licensing going on in the AVOD space.
Movies
Lastly we asked in our survey about movies, specifically how traditional windowing has changed since the pandemic. Most of our respondents heavily believe that studios will continue to release movies in theatres with shorter theatrical windows with 76% of people believing this. Related to this 66% of responses believed all movies will be available in a Premium VOD window shortly after Theatrical. Theatre closures throughout the global pandemic and strategic shifts to support the launch of Studio D2C services have acted as a catalyst to significantly change the release patterns of movies. Currently windows have settled at around the 45 day window post theatrical in the US and this is starting to have major implications. Pay TV services, which have traditionally been the home of premium movie services, will considerably suffer if windows remain shorter and potentially become an ARPU killer for them.
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