Among them, Slovakia is ranked best with 17.8%, followed by: Portugal (13.2%), Bulgaria (11.8 %), Georgia (11.6%), Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro (9.2%), the Czech Republic (9.1%), the Russian Federation (7.2%), Lithuania (6.8%) and Malta (5.7%).

Poland and Estonia are the second and third EU markets with the biggest share of European films distributed in 2019 – 41.9% and 41.2%, respectively (after UK/Ireland - 48.3%), while Poland is the third country where the national market share was the highest among the EU markets in 2019 – 21.7% (after UK/Ireland with 47.2% and France with 34.8%).

Before the Coronavirus pandemic, the screen infrastructure continued to expand in a number of Eastern European and Baltic countries, including the Czech Republic (+63 screens), Romania (+28), Bulgaria (+23) and Latvia (+15), while in Slovakia and the Czech Republic the screen digitalisation was still in progress.

According to the report, TV and radio advertising are likely to be most affected by the COVID-19 related recession, which will probably be long-lasting. In five countries, including Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Slovakia, advertising revenues represent over 50% of total audiovisual sector revenues, and so the sector in those countries appears to be particularly at risk, while countries where the contribution of public funding to the sector is the highest include Cyprus, Croatia and Montenegro.

Initial research by the European Audiovisual Observatory suggests the audiovisual sector lost over 10% of its revenues in 2020 compared to 2019, and close to 15% excluding on-demand services.

You can download the yearbook from HERE.