Analysis

New research from YouGov suggests that the BBC iPlayer is "treading water," while its competitors Amazon and Netflix are "starting to make waves" in the streaming landscape.

For the first time ever, digital sales for video have surpassed physical formats in the U.K., with revenues from downloads and subscription services now exceeding those of DVD and Blu-ray discs.

A new report from Digital TV Research forecasts 55.17 million paying SVOD subscribers across 17 countries in Western Europe by 2021, with Netflix and Amazon Prime Video as the dominant services.

Digital TV Research estimates that Eastern Europe will have 18.19 million paying SVOD subscribers by 2021, up from the 3.33 million reported at end-2015.

Marking World Television Day today, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the Association of Commercial Television in Europe (ACT) and egta, the association of television and radio sales houses, are touting the continued strength of the medium across the globe.

Despite the short-term effect of the EU referendum, U.K. advertising is set to see the eighth successive year of growth, up from 6.3 percent to 7.2 percent for 2016, according to GroupM. The firm predicts a rise from 5.8 percent to 7.2 percent for 2017. This increase in spending takes the industry to an investment of £18.8 billion ($23.6 billion) in 2017.

Film and TV fiction offerings make up a dominant 61 percent of all pay on-demand services in Europe, compared with only 14 percent of TV channels, according to new figures from the European Audiovisual Observatory.

Western Europe’s pay-TV markets are going from strength to strength, while growth is slowing for Netflix and other OTT services in the region, according to new research from Ovum. Ovum's Western Europe: Pay-TV & Free-To-Air Forecasts to 2021 report finds that there were 98 million pay-TV subscribers in Western Europe at mid-2016 and is forecasting that 7 million more will be added by the end of 2021, taking the total to 105 million.

A new report from Digital TV Research finds that Liberty Global, Sky Europe, Vodafone and Altice jointly account for half the pay-TV subs in Western Europe. According to the Western Europe Pay TV Operator Forecasts report, 73 top operators collectively accounted for 93 percent of Western Europe’s pay-TV subscribers by end-2015.

Total spending on SVOD in Western Europe hit the €2 billion mark ($2.24 billion) in 2015 and is forecast to reach €3 billion ($3.35 billion) by year-end 2016, according to a new report from IHS Markit. As existing services reach saturation in key markets, year-on-year growth in spending on online SVOD in Western Europe will slow into the forecast period (2016-2020), the report said. Even this slower increase in value generated from SVOD will be sufficient to make the platform the largest in terms of total home video spending.