Markets

At NEM Zagreb on December 8, 2025, Slick Strategy’s founder Lühr-Martin Lemkau delivered a keynote that left industry professionals with a fresh understanding of how Central and Eastern Europe consumes streaming content. Under the title “Slick & Quick: How CEE Countries Differ on Netflix?”, Lemkau unpacked a year’s worth of Netflix Top 10 data and revealed the region’s viewing habits. What followed in just 15 minutes was an often-surprising look into how viewers across Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Serbia, and Slovenia consume Netflix content—and how those patterns challenge assumptions.

Lemkau began by setting the framework: Netflix’s layered system of public data releases—Top 10 by country, global lists, and the semiannual “What We Watched” reports—now enables analysts to map audience behavior.
He highlighted the performance of the series “Absentia”, starring Stana Katić, which just hit the global Top 10. The show was commissioned almost a decade ago and produced in Bulgaria. An eye-opening slide showing the Google Trends over the recent years, demonstrated the power of Netflix “making content pop”.

The Global View: Hits Travel, but Not Evenly
Before zooming into CEE, Lemkau stressed the overarching dominance of global franchises. Using a consolidated CEE Top 50 ranking he revealed how differently the region engages with shared content offerings. Titles like “KPop Demon Hunters”, “Squid Game”, and “Wednesday” occupied the top CEE positions. Lemkau highlighted an unusual dominance of “Peppa Pig” in Croatia, and “Kitty Kotty” (“Kicia kocia”) in Poland, and Serbia’s disproportionately high consumption of Spanish-language series—an anomaly within the region.

Furtheron, he underlined the importance of local acquisitions in countries like Hungary and the Czech Republic. These examples underscore that local content can outperform global franchises when it taps into national identity, nostalgia, or social relevance.
At the end Lemkau explained how the Polish original productions traveled and entered the Top 10 in foreign countries, like the comedy series “1670” in Iceland. Even though drama series usually resonated better with international audiences, like 2025 released Polish shows “Inside Furioza” (“Druga Furioza”) or “Just One Look” (“Tylko jedno spojrzenie”).

With a sleek presentation design and an analytics-driven narrative, Lemkau’s keynote exemplified the growing role of data literacy in content strategy. It offered a “slick and quick” but deeply informative perspective on how the CEE region watches content on the world’s largest streaming platform.