Streaming Europe explores how global streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video have reshaped the audiovisual landscape across Europe.
Since Netflix’s arrival in 2012, the European media environment has undergone a rapid transformation, affecting every level of the industry—from production and distribution to policy and audience engagement. This book offers the first comprehensive, empirical, and comparative examination of these changes across different European markets. Written by a team of leading media scholars, it balances accessible analysis with evidence-based insights to examine how streamers have altered production practices and business models, shifted established power dynamics, and challenged long-standing broadcasting legacies. The book examines global streamers’ market-entry strategies, the use of diversity and inclusion as competitive positioning, and the tensions between producers over rights retention and local authenticity. It analyses how public and commercial broadcasters across large and small European markets have both emulated Netflix and sought to differentiate themselves from US streamers, and how governments have responded with a patchwork of policy tools such as prominence regulation, quotas, and investment obligations, raising questions about their long-term effectiveness. Finally, it explores how different genres—including teen drama, documentary, European film, scripted television, and web series—both shape and are shaped by global streamers’ evolving strategies.
With its strong foundation in research and pan-European scope, Streaming Europe goes beyond single-country perspectives to present a timely and nuanced understanding of how the streaming revolution is shaping Europe’s cultural industries. It will be highly relevant to researchers in the field of Media industries, media economics, audiovisual industries, and media policy.
This book explores how global streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video have reshaped the audiovisual landscape across Europe. It will be highly relevant to researchers in the field of Media industries, media economics, audiovisual industries, and media policy.
Preface
Foreword, by Ramon Lobato
Part I. Setting the scene: Streaming and the European audiovisual market
1. Streaming in Europe: The editors introduction
Catalina Iordache and Tim Raats
2. Key differentiators and commonalities in global streamers
Annelien Smets and Heritiana Ranaivoson
3. Global streamers market access strategies and economic positioning in
Europe
Marlen Komorowski, Nino Domazetovikj and Tim Raats
Part II. Market and production
4. Working with global streamers: Navigating revenue, reach and autonomy in
European television production
Axelle Asmar, Gabriela Orestes and Tim Raats
5. Investments in original fiction series by foreign streamers and the
boundaries of localisation
Catalina Iordache, Adelaida Afilipoaie, Tim Raats and Ruyin Li
6. European original film production for global VOD services: National
continuities and genre revivals
Eduard Cuelenaere and Christopher Meir
7. Diversity-on-demand: Branding difference(s) in European streaming
Axelle Asmar
8. The streamification of sports broadcasting
Tom Evens and Paul Smith
9. Reshaping European film distribution: The influence of streaming services
on release windows
Paul Hammoud, Heritiana Ranaivoson and Onur Karahan
Part III. Content and catalogue
10. Catalogues in context: Unpacking transnational strategies on streaming
services in European markets
Catalina Iordache and Maria Trinidad García Leiva
11. Localisation at scale: Dubbing and subtitling in the age of streaming
Pedro Gallo and Catalina Iordache
12. The documentary: From niche genre to streaming darling
Catalina Iordache and Eline Livémont
13. Streaming teen television in Europe: A transnational renaissance?
Axelle Asmar, Tim Raats and Leo Van Audenhove
14. Short series of Europe: A subcultural circuit of popular and critically
acclaimed filmmaking
Guy Healy
Part IV. Responses from industry and policy
15. Strategic responses by public service media to global video streamers:
Practices and key trends in Europe
Pieter Van der Elst, Catalina Iordache and Tim Raats
16. The search for reach and revenue: Responses of commercial European
broadcasters to streamers
Tim Raats and Catalina Iordache
17. Capturing a fast-moving target: Regulatory responses to global streamers
in Europe
Tim Raats and Catalina Iordache
18. Streaming in the Land of Bad TV: The consolidation of the OTT video
market in Central and Eastern Europe
Petr Szczepanik
19. How audiences respond to streaming services in Europe
Jeroen Peeters, Noëmie Forest and Wendy van Den Broeck
20. Conclusion
Tim Raats and Catalina Iordache
Index
Tim Raats is an Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium. He is head of the Media Economics and Policy unit at imec-SMIT-VUB (Studies on Media, Innovation and Technology) and specialises in policy and market research, with a particular focus on financing and production in small audiovisual markets, and management and policy challenges for public service media.
Catalina Iordache is a Senior Researcher and Guest Professor at imec-SMIT, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium. Her research focuses on media industries studies, public service media, and European audiovisual policy. She holds a PhD from the VUB (2022) and bridges scholarly research with project management (in 2026, the MSCA RePIM Doctoral Network) and (post) graduate teaching.
