Someone prep the accountants at the major studios: the big SVOD players—Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon—are getting ready to spend $6.8 billion on content licensing in 2015, according to a newly released analysis from RBC Capital Markets.
Analyst David Bank said that Netflix alone will spend $3 billion on content in the coming year, rising to nearly $4 billion by 2017. While 10 percent of that spend is expected to go towards original programming like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, the bulk will go towards adding broadcast and cable programming to the service’s streaming library.
Bank pegs Amazon’s coming spend at $1.7 billion, while Hulu is expected to lay out $1.5 billion.
Cable channels are still expected to beat the SVOD companies when it comes to off-network domestic syndication, Bank says, but the divide is narrowing. He puts the off-net domestic syndication price tag at $18.4 billion.
The 2015 projections are all the more notable because digital brought in a whopping $0 in revenue for the studios as recently as 2009, wrote The Hollywood Reporter on Friday.
How much can the individual studios expect to earn from SVOD next year? According to Bank’s breakdown:
-CBS Studios $179 million
-Warner Bros. TV $106 million
-Lionsgate $61 million
-Sony Pictures TV $43 million
-20th Century Fox $40 million
-ABC Studios $40 million
-Universal TV $22 million
Read More: Variety, The Hollywood Reporer
Brief Take: SVOD companies are already spending more than broadcast stations on syndication. This source of cash is going to become even more important for the bottom line as younger viewers stream in even greater numbers.
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