‘HBO, Netflix lead Amazon in digital originals’

Demand for key original series from HBO Now and Netflix far out-strips that for Amazon Prime Instant Video shows internationally, according to new research.

Parrot Analytics’s study of the UK, US and Australian markets showed HBO’s Game of Thrones is by far the most demanded originally-produced series from an SVOD provider.

The results were reached through an average of ‘demand ratings’ – which are a relative measure of demand across markets – and ‘demand expressions – which are an absolute measure of demand within a market.

In the US, Game of Thrones garnered 28.3 million demand expressions, almost double the 14.2 million for Netflix’s Narcos. The top five were rounded out by Orange is the New Black (Netflix, eight million), True Detective (HBO, 7.8 million) and Silicon Valley (HBO Now, 6.3 million).

Amazon’s highest-placed original, Hand of God, came in at eleventh and took just under two million.

There was a similar pattern in the UK, where Game of Thrones generated 6.4 million demand expressions, with Narcos (2.2 million), True Detective (2.1 million), Orange is the New Black (2.1 million) and HBO’s Ballers (1.4 million) rounding out the top five. Amazon’s most-demanded show, Hand of God, was ninth with nearly 900,000.

In Australia, Orange is the New Black narrowly trailed Game of Thrones (1.7 million to 1.8 million), with True Detective (720,000), Ballers (518,000) and House of Cards (463,000) rounding out the top five. Hand of God was again Amazon’s most-demanded show, coming in at eleventh with 151,000.

Parrot came to its conclusions after assessing file-sharing platforms, peer-to-peer protocols, show wikis, fan- and critic-rating platforms, blogs and microsites, social media sites and the video streaming platforms themselves. These together provided the demand expression and demand rating figures in September.

Parrot’s analysis revealed that, without Game of Thrones, demand for HBO and Netflix’s top original content was virtually the same, with Netflix actually slightly ahead of HBO in the UK. Amazon, on the other hand, “lags behind these two giants” and was “still a follower in the digital originals game”, the report claimed.

HBO entered the original SVOD space last year with the launch of its HBO Now service. To that point Netflix and Amazon had been slugging it out as the two clear market leaders.