Image: Society of the Snow, Netflix
Spanish language content makes up a large share of global demand and has a history of transcending national borders both across the Spanish speaking world and to other non-Spanish speaking markets. Specifically looking at Spain as an origin market for high value content, we see that Spanish productions have seen a 22% global increase in availability on major streaming platforms between 2021 and 2023, reflecting rapid growth in new content and availability. Many of these titles have become high-performers globally, with over 200 titles in the top 10% of demand on major global streamers. Importantly, it is not just Spanish speaking markets driving this growth - there has been growing demand for shows and movies from Spain across regions of the world.
With Parrot Analytics’ Content Valuation System we can measure the contribution of individual titles to platforms’ subscriber acquisition and monthly retention (and by extension revenue). From here we can quantify at a macro level the amount of revenue that shows and movies from Spain have contributed to streaming platforms around the world. The revenue from Spain originated content is on the rise across major streaming platforms, showing consistent year-over-year growth.
In total, titles from Spain have generated $5.1 billion in global revenue for major streamers over the past four years, marking a significant contribution to the global entertainment landscape. To provide some context to this number, this represents 8.9% of all streaming revenue generated by non-English titles for platforms globally. Spain ranks fourth globally as the country of origin for non-English content that has generated the most revenue for streamers. This places it behind Japan, South Korea, and India, but ahead of any other European or Spanish-speaking market in terms of revenue generated.
Netflix has been at the vanguard of bringing Spanish content to global audiences, notably with the growing “Money Heist” franchise but also shows like “Elite”. The platform has also played a similar role with the global boom in demand for Korean content, though as we’ve previously reported the demographics of the audiences for Korean and Spanish titles are distinct, an important consideration when building out a catalog of international content that reaches as many demographic groups globally as possible.
The Spanish movie, “Nowhere,” was the non-English film that drove the most subscriber growth for Netflix in 2023. It ranked first in terms of the number of global subscribers it acquired for the platform in its first 13 weeks (79k) and also ranked first among foreign language films in the number of subscribers it helped retain (869k). Two other Spanish movies (“Birdbox Barcelona” and “Sister Death”) also ranked among the top 10 non-English films in terms of their value to Netflix measured by acquired and retained subscribers.
While Netflix might have been at the leading edge of capitalizing on global demand for Spanish content, other platforms are following suit. “Red Queen (Reina Roja)” ranked in the top 5 new Amazon Prime Video series this year that acquired or retained the most subscribers for the platform globally. On Apple TV+, “Land of Women (Tierra de Mujeres),” a Spain/US co-production, was in the top 15 new Apple TV+ series this year ranked by acquired or retained subscribers.
