Spain: Linear FTA TV dominates
March 21, 2024
From David Del Valle in Madrid
The majority of Spaniards (78.4 per cent) prefer to watch linear FTA TV over pay-TV or streaming. A report made by Dos30′ using Kantar Media and Comscore data further reveals that the country’s traditional linear TV operators -Atresmedia, Mediaset, RTVE, Regional channels – provide the most-watched TV channels. Including thematic DTT channels, the number of people watching linear TV amounts to 84.2 per cent versus 15.8 per cent for streaming services like Netflix, Prime Video, HBO Max, Atresplayer and Mitele, and 5.8 per cent from pay-TV, according to the report citing audience ratings from Febriuary.Atresmedia, operator of Antena 3 and La Sexta among other channels, pulled an average 24.8 per cent audience share in February, leading the ratings ahead of Mediaset (with 23.4 per cent), RTVE (with 13.4 per cent), thematic DTT (with 9.1 per cent) and Regional TV (with 7.7 per cent).
Among the streaming services, Netflix took the crown with a 4.8 per cent audience share followed by YouTube (with 4.1 per cent), Prime Video (with 2.3 per cent), Disney+ (with 1 per cent) and HBO Max (with 0.6 per cent). Only traditional linear TV is able to draw large audiences in the million. None of the streaming services like YouTube or even new media models like Twitch have, to date, attracted more than 300,000 simultaneous viewers.
As for content, football is king with over 3.17 million viewers watching La Copa del Rey in February on RTVE; news programmes on Antena 3 achieved an high of 2.88 million viewers. By contrast, the most popular content on YouTube like Urban Roosters had 284,000 viewers on average, and TheGrefg on Twitch reached 258,600 viewers.