Audiovisual

The cinema industry: how to deal with changing viewing behaviour

The corona pandemic meant the end of a long, uninterrupted boom for the Dutch cinema industry five years ago. The pandemic seems to have permanently changed the viewing behavior of visitors and cinemas are now looking for new ways to respond to this.

From 2007 to 2019, the number of visits to cinemas and movie theaters almost every year, from 23 million visitors to 38 million visitors (see the figure 'Number of visits to Dutch cinemas and film theatres'). In 2019, these visitors were good for a cinema receipt of no less than 347,6 million euros - the umpteenth record year in a row for the sector (see the figure 'Turnover cinemas in the Netherlands'). The long-term, mandatory closures due to the corona pandemic in the following years caused a collapse in visitors and income in 2020 and 2021, after which the recovery in the years after that was difficult and slow. In 2023, the number of visitors was 31 million, still almost 15 percent lower than in the years 2017-2019. The following year, the number of visitors even fell again, to 29 million. The turnover of the cinemas is also still below the level achieved in 2019. Incidentally, this is a trend that can be seen not only in the Netherlands, but worldwide (de Groot 2024, NVBF and NVPI 2025b, Filmfonds 2024b).

Although the cinema industry itself points to the prolonged strikes in Hollywood in 2023 as a major reason for the drop in visitors last year and is confident that 2025 will be a better year, there also seems to be a change in viewing behavior. Although ticket prices fell for the first time in four years and the number of cinemas and seats has actually increased since the pandemic, fewer people went to the cinema than in 2020 for the last time in 2022 - except for the corona years 2010-2024. In contrast to the cinemas, movie theaters, arthouse cinemas and arthouse cinemas actually had a good year: one in eight Dutch people visited one of them and together they attracted more visitors in the past two years than before corona. This picture is in line with a trend that has been visible in the United States for some time now, where smaller films and blockbusters in particular are still doing well, but the large middle segment is starting to disappear (Bos 2025, NVBF and NVPI 2025b, Dijksterhuis 2025, van Zwol 2025, Filmfonds 2024b).

Unlike other cultural sectors, cinemas do not have to fear possible VAT increases, but they are struggling with declining visitor numbers, increased maintenance and energy costs and staff shortages. They are trying to win back customers by investing in more luxury and service and by offering unique viewing experiences. Partly encouraged by the success of streaming services, cinemas are focusing on, for example, additional content or podcasts. Kinepolis organizes so-called Discovery Days around the release of new films. Het Filmhuis in The Hague has had a boutique cinema with lounge chairs and two-seater sofas since 2020. An innovative concept is The(Any)Thing by Pathé: an app with the option to make your own choices about the film to be watched, the start time, breaks, drinks and snacks in 13 smaller cinemas with space for 2-5 visitors. Nevertheless, competition from streaming services remains fierce and it remains an ongoing challenge for cinemas to attract people to the big screen (Dijksterhuis 2024b, UNIC 2024, van Zwol 2025, Dijksterhuis 2025).

Streaming Service Revenue: Is the Streaming Acceleration Over?

The strong revenue growth of the audiovisual sector in recent years is primarily driven by the spectacular growth in revenue that streaming services are seeing. Ten years ago, the revenue of SVOD and DVD and Blu-ray sales were still close to each other at 126 and 100 million euros, well behind cinema receipts that year, which amounted to 276 million euros. In 2023, the revenue of SVOD will amount to more than 1,1 billion euros. Revenue from DVD and Blu-ray sales has fallen sharply in the same period to just 17 million euros. Cinema receipts have risen with peaks and troughs to 333 million in 2023. Since 2018, when VOD revenue first exceeded that of cinemas, the difference in revenue has become very large very quickly (Filmfonds 2024b).

The number of VOD platforms available in the Netherlands has increased rapidly in recent years. In 2023, a total of 49 TVOD and SVOD platforms will be available (including 'catch up'): 28 paid and 7 free SVOD services and 14 TVOD services. The VOD monitor of the NVPI and the Film Fund shows that in 2023, 75 percent of Dutch households will use VOD platforms, a percentage that has been slowly increasing in recent years (in 2021 it was 72 percent and in 2022 73 percent). The American Netflix is ​​by far the most popular SVOD platform in the Netherlands and is used by 59 percent of households in 2023. This is followed by the Dutch Videoland (28 percent) and the American Disney+ (24 percent), which are steadily attracting more viewers and subscribers. Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max and Viaplay remained fairly stable, but NPO Start saw its subscriber base more than halve last year. The most popular TVOD platform in the Netherlands is Pathé Thuis: 14 percent of households indicate that they use this platform to rent or buy films online (Film Fund 2024b).

In the battle for streaming subscribers, exclusive content plays a crucial role. In 2021, for example, Amazon bought the American film studio MGM for an amount of almost seven billion euros, which brought in a catalogue of more than five thousand titles for Amazon Prime Video. At the same time, the various streaming services produce many exclusive films and series of their own to attract viewers and subscribers. However, the large profits that streaming services have also booked in the Netherlands in recent years do little to contribute to development and production in the Netherlands, as the Film Fund already noted in 2012. Compared to other European countries, the Netherlands is less successful in attracting investments from streaming services. This is also confirmed by the 2024 exploration by Filmforward: the number of talent development programmes of the major streaming services aimed at Dutch makers is limited and initiatives often primarily serve their commercial purposes (Fontaine 2024a, van den Elshout 2024). The Film Fund and the Raad voor Cultuur have pointed out in recent years the need to do something about these imbalances (Film Fund 2012, Raad voor Cultuur 2018, Rutten 2019, Reijn et al. 2019).

This has led to the fact that in October 2023, following similar legislation in other European countries, a law has been passed that obliges streaming services to invest 1 percent of their annual turnover in Dutch audiovisual productions as of January 2024, 5. The law aims to stimulate the cultural offering, strengthen the competitive position compared to international providers and promote the diversity of offerings in the sector. At least half of the investments must go to Dutch films, series and documentaries and at least 60 percent to independent productions. This measure, which applies to streaming services with an annual turnover of more than 10 million euros, such as Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime, is expected to yield around 45 million euros in additional investments for the sector. In October 2024, Minister Eppo Bruins (OCW) announced that two evaluations would follow in 2027 to assess whether the measure actually strengthens the audiovisual sector (Bruins 2024, Boonekamp and Lauwen 2024).

The growth of SVOD and the related increase in the production of high-end series over the past decade does seem to be slowing down recently. Although specific figures are not made public by the streaming platforms themselves, the Film Fund has been pointing out for two years in a row that the growth of the total number of subscribers to VOD services is leveling off. Moreover, the number of SVOD platforms in the Netherlands fell for the first time in 2023, from 55 to 49, and the subscription prices of the seven largest streaming services have increased by an average of 2022 percent since 36. In Europe, 2023 marked a possible turning point: fewer episodes of series were produced that year, fewer high-end series were made and series stagnated in terms of the number of episodes and episode lengths. Nevertheless, market leader Netflix, partly due to the above-mentioned legislation, plans to invest more in the Netherlands in the coming years: in 2025 it wants to make two films and four series and the following year the ambition is to further increase the number of films (Filmfonds 2024b, Willemsen 2025, Schneeberger 2024b, Beukers 2024a).

The Dutch film industry: quality over quantity?

Although the number of films produced and released temporarily decreased sharply during the corona years 2020-2022, we have seen over the past ten years that more and more films are being made and released every year. In 2024, a record number of 520 new films and 90 Dutch productions were released, a significant improvement on the record of 2023, when it was 502 and 77 released films. The number of Dutch films produced is also increasing every year, from 58 in 2019 to 68 in 2023. At the same time, the average production budget off. In the period 2017-2019, this amounted to more than 2,10 million euros per film, while in 2022 and 2023 this had fallen to below 2 million euros per production. Since the number of cinema visitors has not increased for five years, this means that individual films attract fewer and fewer visitors on average. Dutch arthouse films in particular have had a hard time in recent years, with the majority attracting fewer than 10.000 visitors. It no longer seems to be a question of whether, but when this trend of ever more productions and releases will be reversed. In Europe, that turning point may already have been reached when it comes to television productions: in 2023, 6 percent fewer fiction titles and fewer series were produced (Film Fund 2020, 2024, NVBF and NVPI 2025b, NFF 2024a, Schneeberger 2024b).

At the same time, there have been calls and initiatives in recent years to invest in talent development and the quality of Dutch films. This was evident, for example, in the Principles of cultural policy 2021-2024 by then Minister Ingrid Van Engelshoven. More attention should be paid to the development of scenarios and film plans (Engelshoven 2019). Since then, several initiatives have emerged to strengthen the Dutch audiovisual sector, for example the new network organization FilmForward, which is also explicitly committed to a more diverse and inclusive sector. Other initiatives include 3LAB Series Contest, Cinesud en New Nordic Wave.

This debate was further fueled in September 2023 with the publication of a study conducted by British research agency Olsberg SPI, commissioned by the Film Fund. This report shows that Dutch feature films are significantly less successful abroad compared to those from Belgium, Denmark, Austria and Sweden. Despite the fact that the Netherlands produces the most films of the countries studied, these are rarely selected for major festivals and almost never win major prizes. The Film Fund has long noted that the Netherlands performs well in documentaries, VR productions and short films, but is less successful in feature films, despite significant investments in this genre. The same report also showed that several Dutch feature films attracted many visitors in their own country (Olsberg SPI 2023).

In 2024, both the Film Fund and Eye Filmmuseum and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science will focus on stimulating quality and developing talent. On 1 February 2024, the Netherlands Film Fund launched its policy plan for the period 2025-2028, in which the priorities are: focus on quality, putting makers first, emphasizing talent, increasing audience reach and offering room for experimentation. Amid the rapidly growing range of films from various countries and on various platforms, the Film Fund emphasizes the importance of sufficient attention and budget for the production of original, distinctive Dutch films and series (Film Fund 2024a). At the same time, Eye Filmmuseum wants to promote Dutch films abroad even more effectively through its collaboration with the Film Fund in SEE NL, which has supported the international promotion of Dutch films since 2019 (Eye Filmmuseum 2024).

In October 2024, Minister Bruins established his new agenda for the integrated sector-wide approach also focuses on stimulating quality and national and regional talent development of beginning and more advanced talents. He also calls for more cooperation between private and public parties and public parties among themselves. In response to the Filmforward report on the current talent programs in the sector, he also asks “public and private parties to jointly arrive at a shared vision on talent development within the Dutch audiovisual chain and to develop concrete actions.” Furthermore, the minister wants to introduce a periodic monitor 'AV sector in focus', in order to gain better insight into, among other things, the complementarity of public and private financing schemes, a theme that the Film Fund will also pay more attention to in the coming years (van den Elshout 2024, Bruins 2024). In doing so, the Netherlands is following two European trends within the film industry: firstly, relatively less money has been raised through public financing schemes in recent years and secondly, EU support has started to focus more on larger production companies and larger productions, in order to compete with American productions (Fioroni 2023, Dams 2024).

Fair Pay, sustainability and regional film initiatives
At the same time, there are ambitions within the film industry in the field of Fair Pay, sustainability and regional diversification. For example, since 2022, the sector has been developing practical tools to implement the Fair Practice Code. In 2024, a conceptual framework of 333 concepts was developed and a guideline for safe and healthy working in the AV sector was drawn up with 32 principles. Self-employed starting rates were calculated on the basis of benchmark research into the collective labour agreements for theatre and dance and broadcasting personnel. In 2025, all these tools must be combined in a new manual for the sector. The practical research published in March 2025 Additional costs of Fair Pay in the film sector concludes that the audiovisual sector still has to make big steps in this area. The costs for realizing Fair Pay amount to an average of 42 percent of the total remuneration and 23 percent of the total production costs. According to the researchers, these relative additional costs are “by far the highest of all parts of the cultural and creative sector examined to date.” (NFF 2024b, Geukema, Goudriaan, Vinken 2025).

Making films more sustainably is another ambition. Although little has been done until recently to reduce the ecological footprint of film productions (Paris 2024), several steps have now been taken in this area. The emissions of a film can be large: where an average household produces around 19 tons of CO² emissions, that is 192 tons for a European feature film according to the European Commission. The Film Fund is committed to making filmmaking more sustainable and offers expertise in the form of sustainability advisors, advice and guidance in the production process and financing. The second inspiration session, which took place in March 2024, looked at the possibilities of VR sets and props and 2D background projections, among other things..

Hand in hand with this drive for sustainability is the desire for more regional film and talent development outside the Randstad (Melchers 2024). To stimulate this, in 2024 the (H)onest Film Code drawn up and supported by eight regional film committees, from Friesland to Zeeland to Limburg. They call for making films according to five core values: (1) together with the community; (2) respect for stories, language, culture and heritage; (3) sustainability and ecology; (4) use of local talent and facilities; (5) fair pay and talent development. With the establishment of a new Frisian Film Fund at the end of 2024, the second regional film fund after Limburg, the regional ambitions will be further shaped. The new film fund has now raised 150.000 euros, wants to raise another 300.000 euros and hopes to provide the first subsidies in the third quarter of 2025 (Dijksterhuis 2024c).

Public broadcasting: turbulent and uncertain times

The Dutch public broadcaster (NPO) has played an important role in the financing and programming of Dutch films and series for many years. Through both financial support and the broadcasting of productions, the NPO contributes to the visibility and development of the Dutch audiovisual sector. In the performance agreements that the NPO has made for the period 2022-2026, it commits to programming at least 10 new Dutch drama productions or new seasons thereof and 18 Dutch film productions in collaboration with the umbrella organization of Dutch film producers (NPO 2022, Uslu 2022b). And since 1998, telefilms specially made for television have been produced and shown on the NPO every year.

In recent years, however, the public broadcaster has been particularly unsettled. Not only are there serious problems surrounding social insecurity in the workplace at the NPO and various broadcasters, but there is also great uncertainty about the future of the public broadcaster due to major, far-reaching cutbacks and reforms announced by the Schoof cabinet that took office in 2024.

Internal unrest and social security
The report was published in January 2024 Nothing seen, nothing heard, nothing done: the lost responsibility of the Commission of Inquiry into Behaviour and Culture of Broadcasters, led by former Minister Martin van Rijn. The commission was harsh on the lack of social safety at the broadcasters: “People sometimes feel like they are a plaything of cronyism and abuse of power.” The Commission found that at all levels the normal responsibilities are “lost” and that “the subject of transgressive behavior is a widespread issue within national public broadcasting and deserves serious attention.” (Van Rijn 2024).

More than a year later, a series of problems in this area have come to light at various broadcasters. Moreover, it appears that changing the work culture is extremely difficult, as concluded independently of each other by the Dutch Media Authority and independent government commissioner for sexually transgressive behavior and sexual violence Mariëtte Hamer. In early March 2025, NPO board chair Frederike Leeflang also resigned after she too was discredited due to an unsafe working environment (Dutch Media Authority 2024, Hamer 2024, Beukers 2025, Beemsterboer 2025b, Bahara 2025).

Drastic cuts and major reforms
In addition to the internal unrest, the NPO is on the eve of drastic cutbacks and reforms. The Schoof cabinet has announced that the broadcasters will be faced with an annual cutback of 2027 million euros from 160 on a total budget that will amount to 2025 million euros in 980. Although the NPO warns that the broadcasters will no longer be able to properly carry out their public mission, the organization is already preparing for the financial blow. In 2026, the NPO already wants to cut 20 million euros to soften the impact of the later cuts. Fiction has so far been spared (Beukers 2024b, Beemsterboer 2025a).

In April 2025, Minister Bruins announced that at the same time as this major cutback operation, he also wanted to drastically reform the national public broadcaster: “The aim of this reform is that the broadcaster will remain visible and discoverable in the future and will be more open to voices from society. We want to achieve this with fewer players, fewer directors, less fragmentation of budgets and less government interference."He wants to reduce the current eleven broadcasting associations to four or five. The NPO and the NOS should each have a separate "task organization” become, the NTR may disappear. Furthermore, Bruins wants to close the broadcasting system for the first time: the possibility to join, which was available every five years for a new broadcaster with enough members, will disappear. At the same time, the remaining broadcasting houses will be legally obliged to “the perspectives, voices and needs of society as best as possible” to give it a place in their offer (Bruins 2025, Beukers 2025b).

Regional and local broadcasters extra vulnerable
The impact of the cutbacks is not limited to the national broadcaster. Regional and local public broadcasters are also in danger of getting into trouble. The thirteen regional broadcasters devote a lot of attention to culture from their own region in their programming, for example through regional soaps and documentaries (RPO 2024). The Netherlands has a total of 203 local and regional broadcasters, almost 49 percent of the total number in the whole of Europe (Schneeberger 2024a).

These local broadcasters are highly dependent on municipal funding. In 2023, Dutch municipalities spent almost 24 million euros on film and video and over 23 million euros on local press and broadcasting. However, from 2026 onwards, municipal budgets will be cut significantly: the municipal fund will be reduced by 2,4 billion euros, causing 75 percent of municipalities to experience financial difficulties. This could mean that municipalities will spend less on local public broadcasters (CBS 2024, VNG 2025). However, the central government is currently working on a system change for local public broadcasters in collaboration with the Association of Dutch Municipalities, the Commissariat for the Media and the Dutch Local Public Broadcasting Foundation. The aim is to transfer municipal funding to the central government and reduce the number of local broadcasters to a maximum of 80. This new law must be submitted to the House of Representatives in the autumn of 2025 and must enter into force in mid-2026..

Diversity, equity and inclusion in professional practice

The research report was published in February 2022 Better is not yet good: the position of women in the film and television sector 2011-2020, which shows that women are underrepresented in the professional practice of the audiovisual sector. The share of women is particularly low in technical positions such as cinematographer and sound designer: only ten and five percent respectively. The research also shows that inequality between men and women increases when productions are more expensive and longer (Sanders 2022). The Netherlands is no exception: throughout Europe, women are strongly underrepresented in the audiovisual sector, with an average of 24 percent. Since 2015, when the number of women was 19 percent, there has been an increase, but at the current rate it will take decades before there is equal male-female representation (Fontaine 2024b).

After the research and the conference Point of View: Towards a new perspective in film and TV (April 2022) Vrouwen in Beeld, Point of VieW, the Dutch Academy For Film (DAFF) and the Netherlands Film Festival (NFF) have formed an alliance to jointly improve the disadvantaged position of women in the Dutch film industry. The research trajectory Experiences and perspectives of female film and television professionals wants to further elaborate on the research report published in 2022 in five different follow-up studies, conducted under the leadership of Utrecht University. The results will be published in the spring of 2025.

Data from the Film Fund, published in March 2024, show that there is still a difference in the number of awards to male and female makers in different categories in the Netherlands. Women submit fewer applications compared to men and are more often involved in film productions with smaller budgets, such as documentaries and short or experimental films. A positive development is that the share of female producers of awarded projects rose to almost 2023 percent in 48. Although 41 percent of the awards that year went to film projects with a female director, almost 70 percent of the total realization budget still went to projects with a male director. The Film Fund strives for a better balance and therefore wants to stimulate the number of applications from female makers. The fact that there is still a long way to go is evident from the fact that of the top 20 most successful films from 2019 to 2023, women directed only 14 to 22 percent and wrote the screenplays for a quarter of these films in 2023 (Film Fund 2024b).

The KLEUR initiative, launched in the summer of 2020 and intended to stimulate greater inclusion within the Dutch audiovisual industry, already pointed out the need for a baseline measurement of diversity in the sector (KLEUR 2022). At the request of KLEUR and DAFF, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science has drawn up the research report You can't be what you can't see, on diversity and inclusion in the audiovisual sector, to be carried out (Crone et al. 2023). This report marks an important milestone: it is the first time that ethnic diversity and inclusion within the film industry has been investigated. The research shows that there seems to be a somewhat representative representation of ethnic groups compared to the national average. The research also shows that there are differences in emphasis based on ethnic background. Makers with an Asian, Moroccan and Turkish background are less represented, while makers of Surinamese, Antillean and Indonesian descent are relatively more represented. Makers of color tend to have less work, are often active in the sector for a shorter period of time and are underrepresented in management positions. A large number of them themselves experience the level of inclusion as insufficient, which also translates into a more negative assessment of social safety in the workplace. According to the report, it is a challenge to convince people in management positions, mainly white men who, as older professionals, are more likely to view current policy in this area as positive, of the need for more inclusive policy and the promotion of diversity. The study concludes with a call to both the sector if it Ministry of Education, Culture and Science to raise awareness.