Brazil

Co-authored by Amanda D. Lotz and Melina Meimaridis

Updated December 2022

Market brief

SVOD services surpassed multichannel adoption in Brazil by the end of 2020, according to Ampere Analysis; the only Latin American market where that was the case. This exceptionalism owes largely to Brazil’s comparatively low multichannel penetration, roughly a quarter of households. That low adoption limited the range of content available to most homes and many of the catalog and more niche titles from US streamers are new to the market.

Netflix is most widely subscribed in Brazil (estimated 19m), but the domestic scene is strongly shaped by legacy conglomerate Grupo Globo, which has steadily expanded the reach of its Globoplay service from Brazil. Globoplay is now available in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States. Despite this expansion, Globoplay’s primary audience remains Brazilians living abroad and Portuguese speakers as it lacks subtitled and dubbed versions in other languages. The service relies heavily on Globo’s productions for its multichannel and terrestrial services and added popular Mexican and Colombian telenovelas to its library through partnerships with Latin American media conglomerates. Globoplay has also fostered partnerships with several other US-based services, such as Disney+, Starzplay, AppleTV+, and Paramount+. Ampere Analysis estimated Globoplay at 5.8m subscribers in June 2022 (presumably globally, but likely most in Brazil).

In addition to the usual US-based services that cover multiple countries, Claro Video is a notable regional service. Globoplay and Claro Video emerge from strong existing players, although Globo’s long history in multichannel service provision and content production clearly advantage it over Claro’s core mobile service enterprise. Claro Video has a much smaller share of the market, with executives reporting 700-800k subscribers between Claro Video and DirecTV Go in 2022. Yet, Claro’s connection with pay-TV services and telephone packages allow it to offer interesting combination packages for subscribers, such as Claro TV+, which provides access to 100 linear channels and many titles on demand.

Notable as well are various smaller and niche services. Launched in 2015, Looke is a young company that, at 500k monthly active users and 100k paying subscribers, is still on the low end of the market compared to its domestic and international competitors. Yet, its objective isn’t to compete with Netflix or Globoplay, but to deliver content others disregard. Even though it has Brazilian movies, TV shows, and documentaries from independent production companies, its library is also made up of low-budget US movies. It has both SVOD and TVOD services, and it has a massive library in comparison with others in the country. Play Plus, on the other hand, launched in 2018 and is a SVOD belonging to Grupo Record. It offers access to the programming of the broadcast network RecordTV. Despite adopting a TVOD format that makes it possible to rent films in 2019, the library remains very limited, with only a few titles being commissioned exclusively for PlayPlus.

Additionally, Netmovies debuted in 2016 as an SVOD but switched to an AVOD model in 2020. The app’s description states that it has 2,500 titles in its library. Petra Belas Artes À La Carte or just À La Carte, is Brazil’s first SVOD owned by a movie theater, the iconic Petra Belas Artes theatre in São Paulo. Expert art curators hand-picked each film in this collection with cinema buffs in mind. It also offers a TVOD service. In contrast, Darkflix is an SVOD service that specialises in scary and horror movies and TV shows. There are more than 3,000 titles and over 230k users. It is worth noting, however, that subscribers are quick to spot the subpar quality of these specialized services, especially in terms of interface fluidity and underlying architecture.

Brazil also has an avid sports fan base, notably for soccer. This national hobby has resulted in the growth of sports-focused streaming services such as the multi-territory DAZN (SVOD) and Sport TV Play (SVOD belonging to Grupo Globo). Several international sports championships have been made available to users of multi-territory services like Prime Video and Star+. The former offers Premiere (access to national soccer championships) as one of its channels in conjunction with Grupo Globo for a pricey subscription, while the latter aggregates all the sports programming of the Disney channels (currently consisting of ESPN and Fox Sports) at no additional cost to subscribers. Additionally, major Brazilian soccer teams have developed their own SVOD services, such as FlaTV+ from the Clube de Regatas do Flamengo and Furacão Play from the Club Athletico Paranaense, both of which provide discounts to registered supporters.

Sources at Globo say Globoplay now has approximately 4,800 titles in its Brazilian library (it was not included in the Ampere data set used here; the chart below depicts its US library). The majority of its titles are reportedly Brazilian, notably Grupo Globo productions, and 45 percent of its collection is made up of foreign works, mostly from the US. This would make the library comparable with Netflix in size and indicate a strong domestic offering, both in Brazil and relative to the non-US-based services developing in many markets. On the whole, Brazil illustrates the complementarity streaming services can make available. The likely competition in the market is likely bifurcated among foreign and domestic services. An array of US-based services are available, but the market is also well-supported by domestic services with strong domestic libraries as well as regional offerings that blend both domestic and regional titles.