According to European Union research, the online entertainment economy across the continent is worth some €200 billion as of 2025. However, this diverse sector is changing rapidly as it adapts to the growing saturation of the shared resource pool: consumer attention.
With digital entertainment now rivalling or surpassing most forms of offline entertainment in revenue and popularity, the various sectors within are converging on a finite audience – meaning more competition, collaboration and crossover. This spurs innovation not only in retention and marketing strategies but also in regulation and law. This is especially true in the EU, where the regional government is actively encouraging and regulating companies towards practices that align with its ethos of social responsibility.
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Video Streaming is the Dominant Digital Entertainment Sector
The European digital video streaming market was worth some €150 billion as of 2025. Despite interest in local alternatives, big American platforms continue to dominate the top of this sector.
Subscription video services like Netflix now account for a significant chunk of the audio-visual entertainment market revenues across the EU. As much as 17%, according to some reports. That means these platforms make more money than recorded music streaming, live music, TV or cinema and theatres – in some cases combined. If you include video streaming on YouTube, the percentage is even higher.
That saturation and ubiquity has been reflected in subscription video streaming prices. In recent years, subscription costs for Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime and others have risen faster in Europe than anywhere else in the world. Since 2022, streaming services have diversified their models – offering lower-tier pricing models with adverts, while also offering ad-free viewing for higher prices. The premium tiers have been particularly pushed in markets like Western Europe and the US, where the average consumer has higher levels of disposable income and is now used to video streaming as a standard entertainment activity.
Online Gambling is Increasingly Popular, UK Still Leads the Way
After streaming, the second biggest form of digital entertainment in Europe might surprise you. It’s gambling. Online betting, from casinos to bookmakers to poker rooms, made some €125 billion across the continent in 2025. In 2026, it looks likely to surpass that once again (although it could be close).
Interestingly, the biggest European economy that isn’t part of the EU is the continent’s biggest gambling market. The UK is consistently the biggest spender on online gambling in Europe, well ahead of France in second place and Germany in third.
The UK Gambling Commission registered gross gambling yield (the money made from winning bets, before anything else that might affect revenues) as £16.8 billion in 2025. That is around 20% of the total yearly European gambling market yield of roughly €125 billion.
Even a site like Casino.org, with its extensive UK page, shows how much operators prioritise the British market. These sites wouldn’t go through the effort of putting together detailed information on almost every aspect of many UK casino sites – from bonuses to payout options to game collections – if they didn’t see visitor interest and clicks. Players use these sites to compare casinos across a competitive sector where details matter, illustrating the sheer scale of the market in the UK and across the continent.
Europe also leads in gambling games and development. Gambling conglomerates Flutter Entertainment and Entain are two major European successes over the past decades, and in the late 2010s Swedish casino game developer Evolution went from relative obscurity to one of the biggest names in global gambling in just a few years.
Videogames are Also Hugely Popular
After gambling the next biggest digital entertainment sector across Europe is videogames. Across Europe, some 199 million people regularly play digital games of some kind. The business generated some €29 billion in direct revenue from European player spend in 2025, let alone the value of locally-based operations.
The continent also supports some 8000 game development studios, from massive conglomerates to indie developers, and they collectively employ more than 100,000 people.
Examples include France’s Ubisoft (one of the biggest global gaming corporations), Finland’s smash-hit mobile game maker Supercell and Belgium’s Larian Studios, the developer behind the massively successful Baldur’s Gate 3.
European-Based Media Platforms are Growing, and Well Supported
The EU is increasingly betting on digital sovereignty, even in the face of huge developments in AI tech from the US and China. For example there are almost 100,000 companies operating in the digital entertainment space across the continent, according to some estimates.
That is reflected in the strength of European game development, from gambling to video games. Even in streaming, international operators increasingly collaborate with national and local broadcasters or production firms, and the UK’s public service BBC still produces globally popular content.
However, streaming is the biggest sector and it remains dominated by American companies. With the EU increasingly taking firm stances in disputes with US social media giants and other tech operators, the European digital entertainment sector is likely to face an intense battle over who controls the platforms and how they are monetised.
