Industry

DAZN was the only major streaming platform to record growth in Spain during the latest quarter, coinciding with the FIFA World Cup, while Netflix and Prime Video continued to lead OTT consumption, according to the latest findings from GECA’s OTT Barometer. The study, which tracks OTT consumption, content performance and audience trends in Spain, highlights several significant shifts across the country’s streaming landscape, including the growing importance of ad-supported plans, changes in movie consumption and the rapid penetration of vertical fiction.
Netflix and Prime Video remain the leading platforms in terms of consumption. At the same time, advertising-supported subscriptions continue to gain ground across the major services. Prime Video’s ad-supported model now reaches 82.7% of its users, while Netflix increased its share to 61.9%, up 0.9 percentage points.

In the series ranking, Berlin leads the quarter with a 25.8% audience share, ahead of Olympo at 14.4% and La que se avecina at 14.1%. In the movie category, Torrente presidente debuted as the most-watched film on streaming platforms during the quarter, reaching 32.1% of viewers. It was followed by The Super Mario Bros. Movie at 20.9% and Avatar: Fire and Ash at 20.3%.
Spanish productions also performed strongly. Aída y vuelta reached 13.7%, becoming the second most-watched Spanish film of the quarter on platforms. Meanwhile, the documentary Miguel Ángel Blanco: las 48 horas que lo cambiaron todo entered the Top 10 national titles with an 8.9% share.
Disney+ once again improved its rating for the quality of its catalogue, gaining 0.5 points, coinciding with the release of Avatar: Fire and Ash. The platform remains the highest-rated service for catalogue quality, followed by Netflix and Movistar+.

Theatrical performance continues to play a major role in driving movie viewing on streaming services. Previous success or impact in cinemas was identified as the main factor encouraging audiences to watch a film on a platform, cited by 64.5% of respondents. This was followed by a title appearing among the most-watched or popular content, at 52.0%.
The transactional model is also showing a slight upward trend in Spain. The biggest increase came from the rental of non-recent films, which rose by 2.4 points, while purchases increased by 0.7 points and rentals of recent releases grew by 0.5 points.

One of the most notable findings concerns vertical fiction. Short-form scripted content in vertical format has already reached 52.3% of Spanish adults, while recent consumption exceeds 58% among audiences under 35. Despite its strong penetration among younger viewers, awareness drops significantly among older audiences. More than half of those aged over 55 say they are unfamiliar with vertical fiction. The format also faces a challenge in converting consumption into lasting title recognition. Only 3% of recent users were able to correctly identify at least one vertical fiction title, suggesting that while audiences are increasingly consuming the format, individual productions have yet to establish strong brand recall.

Piracy remains another significant feature of the Spanish audiovisual market. Consumption increased slightly to 44.4%, up 0.7 points. Cinema remains the most pirated type of content, accounting for 31.2%, while sport recorded the strongest growth, rising by 2.0 points. Piracy is particularly prevalent among younger viewers. The 18–24 age group continues to show the highest incidence, at 73.6%. However, the largest increase during the period was recorded among viewers aged 35–44, whose piracy consumption rose by 5.8 points.