Netflix Finally Launches in Ukraine

Last week American VoD-giant Netflix finally became available in Ukraine. Most of the viewers are happy about that, still some are disappointed.

There have been rumours that Netflix is entering Ukrainian market when the US streamer registered the domain netflix.com.ua back in 2013. It has been a long wait – Netflix primarily focused on Western Europe and Asia. And just now the company has announced its worldwide launch (in 130 international territories), with the exception of Syria, China and North Korea.

The Ukrainian catalogue, according to several sources, has only about 780 titles, 200 of them are series, moreover – its world known original production House of Cards is not available for Ukrainians for now. At the same time, American viewers have access to more than 14 thousand titles. The minimum cost of monthly subscription is € 7,99, which is roughly equivalent to 200 UAH.

Nevertheless, Netflix management has promised to resolve copyright issues as soon as possible, giving the Ukrainians access to more titles. But, obviously, entering the Ukrainian market was a bit reckless action due to the high level of piracy. Also, local OTT platforms legally provide even wider selection of content with lower price tag. 

SVoD-platform Netflix was launched in the USA in 2007 and soon expanded to Canada and Latin America.

In 2012 Netflix came to Europe, starting from the UK and Ireland, then Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. The Netherlands joined the club in 2013, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium and Luxembourg – in 2014, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Spain, Italy and Portugal – in 2015.

According to the latest research, the number of Netflix subscribers now equals 69,170,000. And, as predicted by the British company Digital TV Research, the audience will grow to 115 million viewers by 2020.