Consolidation of broadcasting groups across Europe

The European audiovisual market is witnessing the consolidation of a few big groups dominating the scenario.

Based on data presented in a recent MAVISE report, two initial observations can be drawn. First, major broadcasting groups are consolidating their position within specific national audiovisual markets: the two largest broadcasters concentrate on average 51% of the audience in each of the 30 countries considered, while the three largest group sum up to 64% of the audience share.

Moving from specific national spaces to the European aggregated dimension, what can be noticed is that large international groups – such as Sky Fox and Discovery - are increasingly expanding their presence across Europe, acting as truly transnational groups.
The first two charts show the audience concentration of the major broadcasting groups: the first interactive bar graph displays the concentration of audience share accumulated by the main groups in each country considered. The second interactive chart displays these same data in a "heatmap".

Considering the data, it can be seen how audience concentration reaches values higher than 50% for the 2 main groups in most of the countries considered (17 out of 30). When considering the audience share of the 3 major players in each country, they sum up more than 50% in 26 out of 30 countries considered.

Finally, the third interactive chart displays on a map the expansion of the eleven major pan-European groups according to Mavise data.

These visuzilizations have been developed by Italian datajournalist Lelio Simi as part of the preparatory work for the panel "Visualizing media ownership in Europe", held at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia on April 8th, 2017.