Netflix, Prime Video and RTVE Play defeat piracy and dominate streaming in Spain

The latest study of Semrush, online visibility management and content marketing platform, analyzes the impact and evolution of series and movie streaming platforms, highlighting the consolidation of Netflix and the unstoppable rise of Prime Video y RTVE Play.

The analysis provided by the online visibility platform focuses on the evolution of the type of audiovisual consumption digital in our country. The story begins in the years after the economic crisis of 2008, Spain was one of the world leaders in illegal downloading of content. International organizations related to copyright, such as the International Anti-Piracy Caucus of the United States Congress, reported that in 2011 only four countries surpassed Spain in numbers of illegal downloads: Canada, China, Russia and Ukraine. At that time, content downloads in Spain were estimated at more than 5.1 billion euros, which represented 76% of the market.

In just over a decade, the situation changed significantly thanks to the popularization of streaming services with legal platforms with copyright-protected content in exchange for a subscription. According to the Semrush study, in which the 26 main streaming platforms in Spain and the behavior of its users during recent years, in 2017, two years after the arrival of Netflix to the country, streaming platforms experienced a unprecedented momentum that (with ups and downs) has maintained a general upward trend. These platforms that have dominated the Spanish market in recent years have been in descending order, Netflix, RTVE Play, Prime Video, Just Watch (information aggregator of contents) and Disney+.

The great favorites have remained constant in recent years, although new actors have appeared that have caught the attention of the Spanish public, as was the case of RTVE Play in 2021. The behavior of users on these platforms also presents certain patterns as detected in the analysis. Most of them consume content through mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets; in fact, an average of 73.71% of visits are made from these.

On the other hand, there is a clear disparity in consumer preferences according to their age ranges. More mature audiences tend to lean towards certain platforms with more mature or adult content, while young people show a preference for others with more current, relaxed and mainstream or widely popular productions. Mitele (49.4%), Filmin (42.9%) and Atresplayer (41%) are largely dominated by audiences over 55 years of age. HBO is the clear favorite in the 45- to 54-year-old range, accumulating 30.4% of total visits to the platform. As for the youngest, Netflix stands out with a total of 24.9% of the audience belonging to the age range between 18 and 24 years old, Disney+ (24.7%) for people between 25 and 34 years old and Starz.com (23.7%) for those between 35 and 44 years old.

A future marked by new services

Although the Spanish market for streaming audiovisual content is already very consolidated, certain trends that can dominate your future. A new agent that has entered with great force has been Stremio, una aplicación de entretenimiento por vídeo que funciona como un centro multimedia moderno, y que ha experimentado en los últimos años un creciente interés por parte de los españoles, contando en el último mes con 563.685 solicitudes de información a Google, lo que representa un incremento de más del 640% en los últimos dos años. Actualmente, la plataforma cuenta con más de 388.400 visitantes únicos según del estudio de Semrush, un 155,17% más que en el mes de enero.

Fernando Angulo, director de comunicación internacional de Semrush, considera que “analizar el perfil y el comportamiento de los usuarios en plataformas de streaming es fundamental para entender las preferencias del público y optimizar la experiencia de visualización”. “Estamos viendo como la demanda de contenido audiovisual ilícito cada vez es menor. Búsquedas en Google como “películas gratis online” o “ver películas gratis” tienen una media de 54.396 solicitudes mensuales, que, si lo comparamos con los millones de usuarios de las plataformas que hemos visto en el estudio, quedan relegadas a un lugar residual. No obstante, es un mercado muy cambiante y las empresas deben estar al tanto de las tendencias y las preferencias del público para mantenerse competitivas”, apunta.