FROM THE INDUSTRY
The lowest-ranked services in operator carriage tend to be mostly locally focused, a mix of niche, genre-based services, and broadcaster-owned services. The gradual drop-off after the 10th-ranked service is notable: the next 10 services have only 45 integration instances between them. A handful of regional specialists sit between the global must-haves and the least- integrated services.
The risk with Android TV and third-party streaming hardware is that simply having apps on a box, without billing integration or content discovery, undermines a key operator incentive to offer pay TV and streaming bundles: control over the subscriber and their subscription choices — in effect, disintermediating the operator. This disintermediation is even more pronounced given that smart TVs and streaming sticks offer equivalent or superior access without the operator layer. Customisation is one countermeasure: Blue TV offers the Apple TV 4K box as an alternative to its own TV-Box 5, with the added benefit of a dedicated Swisscom remote.
Meanwhile, France’s major operators — Orange, iliad SA’s Free, Altice France Holding SA’s SFR and Bouygues Telecom SA — feature in the top six by service count. Several factors explain France’s position. France is a highly competitive market with high fibre penetration (83.2%), where operators push hard on innovation to differentiate. France produces a significant amount of high-quality content, back by government incentives and public funding, as well as content quotas, for international services such as Netflix and Disney+, to show and invest in local content. Free best reflects the diversity of available SVOD OTT services, offering more than 16. Free offers several niche or arthouse services — Benshi, Brutx, Shadowz, Outbuster — reflecting a long-tail strategy for video content that is rarely replicated. Providers are developing frameworks to rapidly add and integrate niche/regional OTTs and thematic content platforms, increasing both flexibility and local relevance. Operators that adopt flexibility and curate highly targeted offers (Canal+ and Swisscom) will be better positioned to retain subscribers as content differentiation narrows and more services are added.
Standout bundlers and bundles
VodafoneZiggo Group BV in the Netherlands, with 13 services, and Telia Norge AS, with 11, both rank in the top five despite serving smaller markets, driven by strong local content services (Viaplay, Nordisk Film+, TV2 Play, NPO Plus). As the number of services supported increases, the flexibility to swap out services each month within the operator’s platform becomes a key area for development. The real play here is to tie customers to the operator’s billing platform. Telenor ASA Norway offers include Netflix, HBO Max, TV2 Play, SkyShowtime, Viaplay, and Apple TV+ as selectable options within a base pack of three services, with premium upgrades (e.g., Netflix Premium, HBO Max Premium, Viaplay Total) available as add-ons. For Telenor, this ensures a baseline of services that will always be billed and provides more revenue predictability. Belgium-based cable operator Telenet Group Holding NV introduced full flexibility across its suite of OTT services and deeper integration into its TV user interface to unify services. It consolidates OTT and TV content for search and manages billing through a dedicated page, with users able to add or drop services each month. With many operators in Europe moving away from content ownership, only a few traditional pay TV players owning content and platforms remain. Sky Ltd. in the United Kingdom, Canal+ in France, and Swisscom AG’s Blue TV typically offer pay TV packages with comprehensive slates of the most popular global services and discounts. Sky UK’s OTT bundling is notable, with HBO Max added in March 2026. The offer has become the most complete in the region in aggregating many premium services into a single bundle: Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+, discovery+, Apple TV, DAZN Ltd., Amazon Prime Video and Hayu.
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Third-party platforms: opportunity and risk
Operators relying on third-party platforms for SVOD service integration must weigh platform quality and customisation: the depth of content integration (unified search, recommendations, voice control — increasingly AI-driven), the quality of the billing experience (discounted bundles, single invoice), and the range of hardware form factors supported, from traditional set top boxes to streaming media devices and smart TVs. In Western Europe, 46 of 60 operators (76.7%) have deployed Alphabet Inc.’s Android TV platform, and 26 (43.3%) have deployed Apple Inc.’s 4K TV platform. This shift has enabled smaller operators to market their own pay TV services via third-party platforms and to add stickiness to increasingly commoditised broadband connectivity, with broadband penetration at 89.8% at the end of 2025. Pay TV penetration of occupied homes was 51.1% at the end of 2025, continuing to offer significant room for growth, with a marginal decline in recent years as service bundling remains popular.
Volume 48 No.23 SEPTEMBER 2026
89
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