Australians may be among Netflix’s most engaged subscribers, but they spend very little time watching local stories on the platform, a new report has found.
Data from analytics firm Digital i revealed that 96.4 per cent of Netflix viewing time in Australia during 2025 was spent on non-local content, with See Saw Films’ Apple Cider Vinegar the only homegrown title to make the top ten most-watched shows. Adolescence topped the list, followed by Happy Gilmore 2 and Wednesday.
The figures stand in stark contrast to Australia’s Asia Pacific neighbours. In Japan, 57 per cent of viewing time was spent on local content, in South Korea, 63.9 per cent.
Australian subscribers predominantly switched on to watch US-made titles, with Emily in Paris, Happy Gilmore 2, and The Rookie the top three streams for new subscribers. The Diplomat S3, Nobody Wants This S2, and XO, Kitty led completion rates for the top 100 Netflix series. The highest ten titles achieved completion rates between 76.4 and 89.2 per cent — figures the report describes as reflecting “strong audience engagement at scale.”
The export picture is similarly disparate. Some 1.3 billion hours of Australian content were consumed globally on Netflix in 2025, against 7.3 billion hours of Japanese content and 10 billion hours of South Korean content.
Digital i characterises the findings as a “striking cultural divergence within the APAC region,” in which Australia remains a stronghold for Western content while Japanese and South Korean audiences are increasingly turning toward domestic stories. The firm notes the shift is not only cultural but is being driven by new platform economics — viewers in Japan and South Korea “rapidly migrate to lower-cost, ad-supported tiers to access high-profile local ‘appointment’ viewing.”
The comparison between Australia and markets like Japan and South Korea is not entirely like-for-like. Australian content, typically produced in English, competes more directly with US and UK titles – a structural dynamic not addressed in the report.
Deirdre Brennan at Screen Forever on Tuesday.
The value gap
The question of how Australians engage with local content was also raised at Screen Forever this week.
On a panel on Tuesday, Screen Australia CEO Deirdre Brennan offered an update on the agency’s upcoming Screen Currency report — a study assessing the sector’s economic and cultural value, not revised since 2016.
While more than 60 per cent of 2016 respondents said Australian content accounted for up to half of their media diet, Brennan said the forthcoming results paint a significantly different picture. At the same time, she said “the big headline” is that Australians still value local “at such a level [that] you will be delighted.”
“The reality is they’re not necessarily making their viewing choices based on that sense of value, but we have such an opportunity – and again, thank you to our public broadcasters – to convert that value into engagement,” she said.
“It’s not just about the fact that they’re having trouble finding it. We need to actually think about them when we’re working out those unique stories that we want to tell.”
Moderator Virginia Trioli didn’t let the fact that Australians profess to value local content but don’t watch it land quietly, declaring it the “weirdest stat” she’d ever heard.
The full Screen Currency results are due in July.