Japan's Subscription Video-On-Demand (SVOD) market in 2025: estimated at over 600 billion yen, Netflix further expands its share, remaining in first place for the seventh consecutive years
GEM Partners has estimated the 2025 video streaming (VOD) market size and projected its growth through 2030 under three scenarios: base, optimistic, and pessimistic. In this article, we present the size and share of the Subscription Video-On-Demand (SVOD) market in Japan by service.
Related article： Japan's VOD market size is 674.0 billion yen (2025, +13.6%), estimated to be 895.3 billion yen by 2030
Japan's Subscription Video-On-Demand (SVOD) market is estimated at 601.7 billion yen in 2025 (+14.3% YoY), re-accelerating from a growth slowdown
Japan's market for Subscription Video-On-Demand (SVOD) services in 2025 is estimated to be 601.7 billion yen, up 14.3% from the previous year. Market share is calculated by the estimated total amount consumers pay to subscription service providers and does not include advertising and other revenues. After experiencing rapid growth at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the market size showed a slowing trend year by year since 2021; however, turning around from the +4.1% YoY in 2024, it recorded a high growth rate in 2025.
This growth was driven not by an increase in the number of unique users, but by "an increase in unit prices" and "an increase in the number of services used per person". Behind the "increase in unit price" are price revisions implemented by various companies, such as Netflix's price hike (from October 2024) and the launch of Prime Video's "Ad-Free" plan accompanying the introduction of ads (from April 2025). As a result, the amount spent per user increased, pushing up the market size.
Regarding the "increase in the number of services used per person," according to the "Video Streaming / Broadcasting / Video Software Market User Analysis Report (November 2025 Survey Edition)," the number of unique SVOD service users showed only a slight increase, but the number of services used per person increased from 1.8 in the previous year to 2.0. This led to an increase in the total number of users, becoming a factor that boosted market expansion.
Netflix significantly expands its share to top the market for the 7th consecutive years
Looking at the share of each service in Japan's SVOD market, Netflix held the No.1 position in 2025. It significantly expanded its share to 27.1% (+5.6 pt YoY), recording its highest share since 2016. With this, the service remains in the first place for seven consecutive years. The second largest market share was held by U-NEXT, which maintained its ranking with a share of 17.1% (-0.8 pt YoY). Prime Video in third place also saw a decrease to 12.1% (-1.0 pt YoY) but maintained its position.
Two services rose in the rankings from the previous year: Disney+ and TELASA. Disney+ saw its share slightly decrease to 8.4% (-0.6 pt YoY) but moved up from 5th to 4th place. TELASA grew to 3.1% (+0.7 pt YoY), rising from 11th to 8th place.
Among the 14 services surveyed this time, four expanded their market share compared to the previous year: Netflix, TELASA, FOD, and DMM TV.
The product report estimates the market size forecast to 2030 for the video distribution market as a whole, as well as by " Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD)," " Transactional Video On Demand (TVOD)," and " Electronic Sell Through (EST)," with "base," "optimistic," and "pessimistic" scenarios. This annual report also includes the above estimation logic detailed, so readers can confirm the estimation method.