China‘s entertainment and media industry is set to close the gap on the U.S. over the next four years, according to PWC‘s latest Global Outlook.
Advertising and consumer spending revenues in the world’s second most populous country will shoot up by more than 7% to $362.5B by 2028, according to the report, rising at almost double the rate of the U.S., although the American industry’s figure will remain significantly higher at $808.4B.
“The U.S., representing more than one-third of global spending in 2023, remains the world’s biggest entertainment and media market for the combined advertising and consumer spending markets by a wide margin,” said PWC. “But this scale brings with it maturity and hence relatively slower growth.”
China’s entertainment industry has been expanding in recent years and PWC said its “continued strong growth means it’s steadily closing the gap on the U.S. in terms of market size, although tight government regulation can make investing there more complex than in other territories.”
The fastest growing markets between this year and 2028 will be Indonesia and India, the report forecasted, predicting “rapid growth” over the coming years in these territories.
PWC highlighted that each of these nations has its own distinctive market dynamics, pointing to India becoming the world’s fastest-growing OTT video-streaming market over the period serving its “vast, diverse and widely dispersed population, many of whom are obsessed with sports content in general, and cricket in particular.”
By 2028 and having grown by more than 8%, India’s industry will be worth just shy of $100B, the report said, with Indonesia’s a little way behind.
The report focused heavily on how advertising revenues are developing in the streaming era, predicting that global ad revenues will top a whopping $1 trillion in two years’ time.
By 2028, these revenues will have doubled the figure of 2020, PWC predicted. It pointed to a “plateauing effect” that has “pushed leading streamers such as Netflix, Disney and Prime Video to reshape their business models and find new revenue streams,” including ads and crackdowns on password sharing.
“The big three Western global players in the streaming sector—Disney+, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video—all rolled out ad-funded ‘hybrid tier’ offerings, in which consumers agree to view ads in return for paying a lower subscription fee,” said the report. “In an expanding number of markets worldwide, many smaller or regional players are following suit.”
Global entertainment and media industry revenues are projected to hit $3.4 trillion overall by 2028, the report found.