Streaming in Ireland tops the EU as spending nears €2 billion a year

Irish streamers nearly double EU average

Streaming in Ireland is more widespread than anywhere else in the European Union, according to new figures published by Eurostat.

Almost two thirds of Irish internet users (63.9%) had a paid subscription to at least one film, television series or sports streaming service in 2025.

No other member state came close. Denmark was next on 61.1%, followed by the Netherlands on 59.2%.

How streaming in Ireland compares with the rest of the EU

The Irish figure is almost twice the EU average of 32.7%.

The data covers people aged between 16 and 74 who had used the internet in the three months before the survey.

At the other end of the table, just 9.3% of internet users in Bulgaria paid for this kind of subscription, with Slovenia, Latvia and Lithuania also recording relatively low take-up.

Put another way, an Irish internet user is roughly seven times more likely to be paying for a streaming service than a Bulgarian one.

Film, series and sports services were comfortably the most common paid online subscription across the EU.

Music streaming was next at 23% of internet users, followed by online news sites, newspapers or magazines at 7.2%, and gaming streaming at 6.1%.

The €2 billion question

Separate commercial research points the same way. A Censuswide survey for broadband provider Pure Telecom found 66% of adults paid for at least one streaming service, with average monthly spending among subscribers of €41.93.

Extrapolated across the country, the survey of 1,000 employees in Ireland suggests Irish consumers are spending close to €2 billion a year on streaming.

That is the kind of figure that makes people reach for the cancel button, and plenty already have.

Seven in 10 respondents said they had cancelled at least one service in the previous year, with rising prices the most commonly cited reason.

It is the churn pattern that has become familiar across Irish households: sign up for one series, watch it, cancel before the next billing date, then repeat somewhere else a month later.

Those price rises are not imagined either.

A third piece of research, by Ampere Analysis, found subscribers in Western Europe had experienced the largest average price increases anywhere in the world over the previous three years, with average monthly costs up by €1.59.

Why Irish viewers keep paying up

The figures do not indicate whether Ireland's higher rate reflects greater consumption, differences in household circumstances, or simply the availability and pricing of services here.

Ireland's near-universal English-language content market is an obvious candidate, but the data stops short of saying so.

What is not in doubt is the pipeline of things to watch.

Which is the useful bit of context for anyone doing a subscription audit this weekend, a decent chunk of the Irish television people actually talk about does not sit behind a monthly fee at all.