There's no business like Show Business: Evaluating the impact of lifting geo-blocking restrictions on the audiovisual sector

Increased penetration of high-speed internet and rising numbers of internet users enable an ever-growing number of consumers to enjoy watching TV shows, films, and documentaries online. At the same time, cross-border access to audiovisual content is often blocked due to licensing deals between rights holders and streaming platforms. The aim of the study is to quantify the extent to which consumer welfare would change if geo-blocking restrictions were lifted within the EU, so that a title that is available in any EU country would be available for every EU consumer. We use a novel dataset of actual streaming patterns from SVoD service Netflix to estimate demand with a nested logit model. In a counterfactual analysis, we find that consumer surplus per capita EUwide would increase by 0.13% if geo-blocking restrictions were lifted within the EU. Consumer surplus per capita in the EU would on average increase even more, i.e. 0.31%, if frictionless streaming was possible between all countries in our sample.