While roughly a third of Netflix’s 220 million or so global subscribers may reside in the United States, we’re watching a massive shift unfold right in front of our very eyes, with more international content than ever before racking up major viewing figures right around the world.
French crime thriller Lupin may have been the first French-language effort to crack the Top 10 most-watched list in the States, but on a worldwide basis, the floodgates opened a long time ago. Squid Game is the platform’s most-watched original series ever, while international hits including Money Heist, the recent Hellbound and The Queen of Flow each drew in tens of millions of subscribers following their respective additions.
Analytics firm Digital-i has done some digging, and released a report detailing that audiences from major European countries spent 22% of their streaming time watching shows that were produced outside of English-speaking territories, while the percentage of non-English original episodic fare among the Netflix library rose from 25% to 31%.
Based on the findings, Digital-i believe that by the end of this decade, 50% of all Netflix viewing figures will come from projects in languages other than English, which is of course dependent on the company putting out fare worthy of drawing in that many eyeballs.
