Karol Severin

Karol is a co-founder and Research Director at MIDiA. With over a decade of experience in consumer research, industry analysis, and consulting, Karol oversees the direction, coverage and quality of all MIDiA’s research output. Prior to co-founding MIDiA, Karol gained experience in TMT market research and consulting, as well as an entertainment industry startup founder. He holds a business management degree from Queen Mary, University of London, with specialisation in strategy, quantitative methods, and entrepreneurship.

Quick Take: Here Is Just How Much TV Show Brands Are Diverging Between Linear And Streaming

Cover image for Quick Take: Here Is Just How Much TV Show Brands Are Diverging Between Linear And Streaming
Karol Severin
index
Media
Strategy
Looking at streaming numbers against total viewership and brand awareness reveals some stark differences between streaming and traditional pay-TV. The fact that a TV show can now be in the top five most streamed of the quarter, and simultaneously not even reach the top 100 in terms of brand awareness, highlights two key trends: Niche is the new mainstream: Fandom is fragmenting.
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Data Says: E-sports Events Are More About Live Entertainment than Gaming

Karol Severin
brand activation
e-sports
festivals
Imagine you’ve got three behaviourally defined consumer segments: PC Gamers Console Gamers Live concert goers Which group is most likely to attend an e-sports event? Intuitively, it has to be Gamers, right? …WRONG! Data from the Q1 MIDiA Research survey across the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, Sweden, France, Netherlands, Japan, Mexico, Brazil and India (n=12,000) states that 5% of gamers attend e-sports events, compared to a 3% all-consumer average.
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Netflix After Q2 2019
Post-Peak or Strategic Reset?

Cover image for Netflix After Q2 2019
Karol Severin, Tim Mulligan and Amanda Stears
Free Report
Streaming
Streaming video
Apple TV
With a market capitalisation 122 times its current annual net income, Netflix suddenly finds itself scrambling to justify its price-to-earnings ratio. The July 17th earnings call knocked 11% off the market capitalisation of the poster-child of the streaming era in a matter of two days – equivalent to the entire market capitalisation of Snap Inc, another former darling of the tech and media landscape.
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The Games Streaming Subscription Revolution
Meet the Players

Cover image for The Games Streaming Subscription Revolution
Karol Severin
Streaming
Apple
Spotify
Streaming is rewriting the games market rulebook. The games subscription landscape is undergoing foundational changes driven by a growing list of new market entrants including tech majors, telcos, leading games developers and publishers. The rise of games streaming opens doors to device- and platform-agnostic solutions all across the attention economy, as companies look to capture the engagement of valuable gamer segments for their respective ecosystems and business objectives.
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Games Console Incumbents Sony and Microsoft Join Forces Against Tech Majors’ Entrance to Games Streaming

Karol Severin
cloud-gaming
Games
Games industry
The enemy of my enemy is my friend – a phrase that nicely sums up the latest major development in games streaming and the console gaming industry. “ Sony and (Microsoft) announced on Thursday that …the two companies will partner on exploring joint development of future cloud solutions in Microsoft Azure to support their respective game and content-streaming services.
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What Epic Games’ Acquisition Strategy Tells Us About the Company’s Long-Term Plans

Karol Severin
Epic Games
Fortnite
Games
Epic Games has announced it is acquiring Psyonix, the creator of Rocket League. As we’ve reported in the past, the coming games streaming revolution, which is already shifting market dynamics to a much more device/platform-agnostic paradigm, will see a small set of large publishers make their own attempts at building entertainment ecosystems and potentially subscription services.
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Can PlayStation 5 Compete Successfully Amid the Coming Games-Streaming Disruption?

Karol Severin
Games
Gaming
PlayStation
As Mark Cerny, the lead system architect of PlayStation, implied in an exclusive interview with Wired , PS5 is coming likely in fall 2020 – and it is not just meant to be a mere upgrade of the PS4. The key question remains, however, whether even a big upgrade to the hardware and gaming experience will be enough to compete in the increasingly platform- and device-agnostic gaming environment.
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