The mastodons of streaming drive the Spanish audiovisual sector to its best moment | Companies

The Snow Society, Elite, Money Heist…beyond being world-renowned Spanish productions, they all share an additional characteristic: they have been produced under the seal of the red N company, Netflix. The country’s audiovisual industry has been changing for several years and in that evolution the large streaming platforms streaming have played a key role. This is one of the conclusions of a study presented today in Madrid by the Rey Juan Carlos University, in collaboration with the North American subscription content platform. This report has unraveled how the landing of these audiovisual mastodons are pushing the Spanish industry to internationalize and, at the same time, providing the sector with knowledge, technology and new ways of working that push Spain-branded entertainment to become a benchmark in global level.

The landing of Netflix in Spain, a pioneer in offering a catalog of on-demand content, occurred in 2015. Since then, the migration towards digital and the democratization of mobile devices has been consolidating a model that today brings together nearly 25 million of subscribers in Spain and nearly 660 million in the world. However, the magic formula of this production company, which was born with the aspiration of renting DVDs in 1997, has been fundamental in attracting generous amounts of investment to a sector that since 2020 the Government classifies as strategic. Specifically, the capital deployed in audiovisual production in Spain has risen from 328 million euros in 2015 to around 850 million in 2023. And it is expected that until 2026 the annual growth rate in investment by operators such as Amazon Prime, HBO or Disney plus, to name a few, grow 15.4% annually, according to the report.

In parallel, the arrival of these firms has accelerated the transmission of knowledge, that is, Hollywood image, sound, dubbing and music techniques have begun to become widespread in many studios in Spain. “Netflix services have carried the entire sector thanks to the transparency with which they have implemented these changes, making a good amount of information and documentation available to the industry,” says the study, directed by José Álvarez, professor at the King Juan Carlos University.

Gabriel Gutiérrez, sound design supervisor at Menos Doce DD, a team that participated in the Spanish film Klaus -nominated for the Oscar for best animated film-, explains that the importation of a “Netflix” methodology has standardized the ways of working. “Now we all speak the same language, before a lot of time was lost because in Spain each team had its own workflow and we had to adapt to it.” Micaela Gagliano, who was in charge of the post-production of The Snow Society, by Juan Antonio Bayona, is in line with that statement. “Now we can dedicate more hours to artistic and narrative creation. “It is a gigantic advance,” he adds.

The technological leap is another of the great vectors facilitated by the presence in the country of the major brands of the streaming modern. The study highlights that there has been a clear commitment to technological development in all areas through information events, platform development, training courses and the implementation of new computer programs. “Now we can do things that were unthinkable before,” highlights Gagliano, who emphasizes that, thanks to new tools, teams can think of new creative perspectives when producing material. Chema Alba, color supervisor at Deluxe Entertainment, supports this argument and adds that in his field, that of images, there have been key advances. “4K and HDR have meant a leap in the capacity for language and new narratives that has not happened since color succeeded black and white,” he clarifies.

At the same time, Alba has seen how all these elements have shortened the technological gap that Spain had with respect to other countries in the production of content. In recent years, the report explains, the number of series has multiplied by three and “some of them have had international resonance that was unthinkable a few years ago.” The last season of The Money Heist After its premiere in 2021, it became the most watched series in the world on Netflix. The premiere of this production is part of the growing export of content made in Spain. If in 2012 the value of exports linked to the audiovisual segment was 96 million euros, in 2021, the last year for which data is available, it reached 773 million; very close to the 1,198 million that fatten the import bag. Although Spain still maintains a negative trade balance in this area, experts believe that at some point this will change.

“I think the time has come to reverse that trend. It is time to believe that we can be a world power in the audiovisual sector,” says Gutiérrez. The study also sheds light on the international perception of the industry in Spain. The most relevant conclusions are that 86% of those surveyed – including universities from around the world – believe that the scripts of Spanish films and series are more attractive than a decade ago. And almost all of them, 94%, agree that this has been achieved thanks to the landing of the streaming in the country.

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