The impact of crossborder access to audiovisual content on EU consumers

The European Commission’s Digital Single Market strategy outlines the potential for greater cross-border access to audiovisual content and services in the future. There is likely to be significant impact on European consumers and the wider European audiovisual sector, as well as to global audiovisual businesses active in Europe.

This report, jointly authored by O&O and Oxera, explores the potential impact of the European Commission’s proposals. Although the Commission’s proposals are intended to increase the availability of content across Europe, it is likely that they would result in significant adverse short-term impacts (up to €9.3bn welfare loss per annum), and that the medium- to long-term consumer outcomes would be worse than they are today (up to €4.5bn welfare loss per annum). In particular, consumers would be worse off through a combination of two main effects:

• less access to content, and/or higher prices—consumers, particularly those in lower-income EU Member States, would have less access to content and/or have to pay higher prices than they do now;

• less content being made—undermining the current system of exclusive and territorial licensing would reduce investment in content, resulting in less content being produced.

As well as the adverse impact on consumer welfare, changes to content production would be likely to reduce cultural diversity in the AV sector across Europe as a result of a weakening in the financial position of many local producers, publishers, distributors and platforms.

Click here to read the report in full.
Click here to download the booklet.