M+E Daily

Multinational streaming competitors are making inroads in Latin America over European markets like France and Spain, aiming for a portion of the projected 110 million potential subscribers the region will offer by 2024.

That’s according to a new report — “Streaming Wars Lighting Up in Latin America” — from Whip Media, which pegs Latin America as the second-fastest growing region for streaming services, second to Sub-Saharan Africa, which has a much smaller subscriber base.

Streamers like Paramount+ and HBO Max are being more aggressive in LATAM over some European markets in order to better compete against Netflix and Disney+, and they’re doing so by using a combination of diverse content, catalogue and originals, as well as local content.

“We evaluated hundreds of TV shows to answer: Will legacy content be strong enough for Latin American consumers to follow it to the launch of another platform?” the report reads. “And will they then be dedicated enough to pay for that content in what may end up as a market with five major streaming platforms? We believe the answer is yes.”

By the end of last year, Latin America was estimated to have more than 62 million streaming subscribers to streaming services, up nearly 40 percent from 2019, and overtaking free broadcast TV for the first time. And while Netflix has been in the region since 2011, garnering 34 million subscribers by last year, Amazon Prime began offering its service in 2016, Apple TV+ followed in 2019, and Disney+ debuted in late 2020. Paramount+ will launch there today, March 4, and HBO Max will follow suit in June.

Those five services are set to account for 88 percent of streaming subscriptions by 2025, according to the report. “How? It’s simple. It’s all about the content. The ability to have diverse content, deep catalogues and award-winning originals intertwined with local Latin-related content, gives these major companies a massive competitive advantage,” the report reads. “The big streaming companies have spent billions of dollars on content curation with the belief that if they own headline content, they will command a large audience.”

The report found that the major streamers’ ability to combine both local language content with big-budget, brand-name catalogue content of interest anywhere in the world makes them uniquely positioned over regional-based competitors. “The more a streaming service rests on its parent company’s legacy content, the less it has to spend on current content to sustain
subscriber activity on its platform. In other words, the backlog of content given the company’s portfolio acts as a built-in content parachute to limit churn for subscribers,” the report concludes.

“For each of HBO Max, Peacock, and Paramount+, the reliance on older content is stronger in Brazil and Argentina than the two European markets. If these streamers are looking to make a quick impact based on the value of their existing portfolio, rather than having to create a rapid and expensive pipeline to establish a foothold, Latin American markets do, in fact, appear to be an attractive option.”

To access the full report, click here.