Who produces (what) for whom? :Identifying the European streaming industry

Video-on-demand (VoD) services are often framed as an evolution of television (Afilipoaie et al., 2021; Lobato, 2019). At the same time, streaming services have also impacted the film industry (Meir &amp; Smits, 2024; Øfsti, 2023b; Scarlata, 2023). The boom in production for VoD attracted both film production companies and television production companies with limited previous drama experience (Engelstad, 2024). SVoD’s localisation and branding strategies, as well as investment obligations in many European countries (Kostovska et al., 2023) have driven local VoD productions, but with fiction commissions declining (Schneeberger, 2024), conflicts about rights and remuneration escalating (Hansen, 2024), as well as outright investment stops, the future for European producers may not look as bright. <br/><br/>Existing mappings of European production (e.g. EC DG Connect et al., 2024; Schneeberger, 2024) do not provide a comprehensive picture of who produces for whom on VoD. European television production companies tend to cluster in international conglomerates (Doyle et al., 2021), while film producers have largely been standalone companies (Bakøy et al., 2017). Within film production for VoD, there are indications, that SVoDs favour established production companies with international ties (Meir, 2023; Øfsti, 2023b), but it needs to be tested whether this applies to serial content. <br/><br/>This contribution, therefore, maps the landscape of producers whom different types of VoD services commission from and identifies their native domains (film or TV / fiction or non-fiction) and corporate structures (ownership and integration). Our analysis focuses on Denmark, Sweden and Norway – three small Nordic markets with some VoD investment – as well as Germany and the UK – two large markets with high VoD investment (Schneeberger, 2024, p. 22). Our goal is to investigate in how far in-vestment of streamers in Europe leads to transformations of broader national production ecologies as well as individual producers’ activities. Producers of different types and sizes may choose to pivot away from broadcast to streaming for the sake of the comfortable financing or keep a foot in the legacy business for the promise of more consistency in commissions and long(er) tail revenues. Given the unequal distribution of investments, we may expect differences across countries and content types. <br/>To get a better insight into the transformative power of streaming services and their power’s unequal distribution in the European production landscape we therefore want to map what kinds of production companies are producing exclusive titles for the three big global streaming services Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ and discuss in how far emerging patterns in these producer/streamer relationships point to shifts from legacy industry practices and might bear risks for the sustainability of the European pro-duction landscape. Our research questions are:<br/>1) How many and which companies have produced exclusive works for global streamers in the five countries?<br/>2) How do these companies differ in terms of size, ownership, placement within the film or the TV industry and their content strategies?<br/>3) What do these patterns reveal about the (unequal) impact of streamers on the European production landscape?