Netflix is growing rapidly in popularity in Lithuania and is now one of the most important players in the country’s audiovisual market.
According to a recent study undertaken by the regulator LRTK, it had 40,000 and 51,000 users in the first and second halves of 2020 respectively. In the first half of this year the figure rose to 65,000. This compared to around 20,000 in 2019 and only about 7,000 in 2018, and comparing the fist halves of 2020 and 2021 the total rose by 62%.
LRTK notes that Netflix “has a significant economic impact on service providers in the Lithuanian audiovisual media market and on all producers of local audiovisual products”.
It concludes by saying that it conducted its study on the basis of data provided by the State Tax Inspectorate under the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Lithuania on the amount of VAT) payable by the Dutch company Netflix International, which operates the Netflix platform.