From binge-watching weekend drama series on Netflix or streaming live football matches on DAZN, nearly one in three people across the European Union now pay a recurring monthly fee just to watch films, series, or live sports online.<\/p>\n
New data released by Eurostat shows that 32.7% of internet users across the bloc held a paid streaming subscription in 2025.<\/p>\n
But how much Europeans actually open their wallets for digital content varies dramatically depending on the country they call home.<\/p>\n
When breaking down the numbers by member state, a stark geographical split emerges: Ireland and Denmark lead the rankings by a wide margin, with 63.9% and 61.1% of internet users respectively paying for video and sports services such as Amazon Prime and Disney+, closely followed by the Netherlands at 59.2%.<\/p>\n
At the other end of the spectrum, willingness to pay for streaming services drops significantly.<\/p>\n
Bulgaria recorded the lowest adoption rate in the European Union at just 9.3%, followed by Slovenia (13.7%), Latvia (16.7%), and Lithuania (17.4%), creating a massive digital divide across the continent.<\/p>\n
Beyond audiovisual entertainment, the data reveals clear differences in the popularity of alternative subscription sectors.<\/p>\n
Audio platforms covering music streaming and podcasts on apps like YouTube Premium and Spotify count 23.0% of EU internet users as paying subscribers.<\/p>\n
Traditional reads such as online news websites, digital newspapers, and magazines lag far behind at 7.2%, while interactive cloud gaming subscriptions like Xbox Game Pass trail at the bottom with 6.1%.<\/p>\n
As digital services continue to anchor modern household routines, these figures highlight a deeply fragmented digital landscape across Europe.<\/p>\n
Subscription services hit with lawsuits<\/p>\n
Despite their apparent popularity in certain countries, subscription services in the EU have also come under fire from customers in recent months.<\/p>\n
A Dutch consumer group is suing Netflix over its subscription price increases of up to 75% since 2017. It put the potential damages at up to \u20ac673 million.<\/p>\n
It follows similar cases elsewhere in Europe, such as a court in Rome ruling in April that Netflix’s price increases in Italy were illegal. The streaming platform is appealing against the decision.<\/p>\n
Various courts in Germany have also ruled in favour of consumers in parallel legal battles, while another in Spain is still ongoing and another in Austria concluded in an out-of-court settlement on compensation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From binge-watching weekend drama series on Netflix or streaming live football matches on DAZN, nearly one in three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[22813,39,40,2800,485,25341],"class_list":["post-128622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-dutch","tag-eu","tag-european-union","tag-eurostat","tag-netflix","tag-spotify"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}