Amazon Prime Video is now the market leader in Germany, according to the recent figures disclosed by Ampere Analysis experts. According to the London-based firm, the streaming giant overtook Netflix’s lead, and the gap is expected to grow in the coming years.

Cineuropa had the chance to talk to Jaanika Juntson, a member of the Markets Operators team at Ampere covering the German market. “Amazon’s lead is driven by many factors, for example Amazon’s higher proportion of German language content. We also expect Amazon’s growth to be driven by its live sports rights, such as the recently acquired rights to broadcast UEFA’s Champions League matches in Germany for the 2021-22 season,” she disclosed.

The firm also provided some 2020-2022 figures monitoring the subscribers’ growth of Germany’s biggest OTT platforms. Amazon leads with 13.8 million subscribers, followed by Netflix (10 million) and Disney+ (5.9 million).

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We therefore asked Juntson to clarify how the ‘active’ subscribers are measured, since said figure can be heavily affected, for example, by users receiving it as a free bonus for their 24h delivery programme.

Juntson replied: “To get to our Amazon Prime Video subscriber figures, which exclude Prime subscribers who do not use the video element of their subscription, we calibrate reported global totals for Prime subscriptions — most recently 200 million — with figures from our twice-yearly Consumer survey, which spanned 25 markets — including Germany — and 96,000 respondents in 2021. In this survey, we ask whether or not an Amazon-subscribing respondent uses the Prime Video element of their subscription to estimate what proportion of the 200 million subscriptions are video users. From this, we are able to calibrate with the 200 million total to only encapsulate subscribers who use the video service. We can then calibrate our figures on a market level with our Consumer data, and against known data points, to best represent our expectation of subscriptions in that market.”

“While there are some Central and Eastern European markets where local streaming services have the market lead — for example, Kinopoisk HD in Russia — Austria and Germany are the only European countries where Amazon has the lead, and the only Western European countries where Netflix is not the market leader,” she concluded.