Managing Competition Between Legacy Television Services and Video Streaming Platforms in Hungary in the Early 2020s – a Case Study

The year 2022 was a turbulent one for the audiovisual industry worldwide. In Hungary, two global streaming platforms, HBO Max and Disney+, launched their services, joining Netflix and some less popular streamers already on the scene. The content offered by these global streaming platforms has a lot in common compared to legacy television’s supply in large markets. However, few studies have focused on small markets or “digital peripheries” where the inevitable global reach of new technologies and service providers mixes with more complicated local market realities. Our study aims to extend this body of knowledge to another small, “odd market,” namely Hungary. It investigates how professionals perceive the television market in the wake of the advent of streaming in their current practice and from a strategic perspective on a small and specific national market such as Hungary. Using in-depth interviews (n = 9) with managers across organizations in the Hungarian audiovisual industry complemented by an analysis of publicly available secondary sources, our findings reveal three main clash areas in the market: established market presence, power within the supply chain, and content offering adding a potential framework for competitive analysis to studies of small media markets and the dynamics between legacy and streaming players.