Italy’s propensity to pay for digital subscriptions remains below the European average. In the first months of 2025, 20% of Italian internet users claimed that they subscribed to a service to watch movies, TV series or sports content. The average proportion among the 27 EU countries is 32.7%. Italy ranks 23rd.
The data comes from Eurostat’s annual survey on household IT use. But be warned, this doesn’t represent the full year of 2025: the survey was conducted in the first quarter and took into account subscriptions used in the previous three months.
The gap between Italy and Europe
Method is also important for correct interpretation of percentages. This 20% is actually calculated based on the number of Internet users, that is, the number of people who were online in the three months before the visit. However, Eurostat also publishes figures based on the entire population participating in the survey. In this case, Italy’s percentage drops to 18.1%, while the European average is 30.7%.
The picture becomes even more distant when you look at digital subscriptions. Only 2.8% of Italian internet users pay to subscribe to news websitesonline newspapers or digital magazines. The European average is 7.2%, more than double the Italian figure.
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Among the 27 member states, Sweden has the highest proportion at 24.9%. Norway performed even better, at 39.8%, even though the country is not a member of the EU and participated in the survey as a member of the European Economic Area. However, Italy finds itself ahead of only Bulgaria, Poland, Slovenia and Greece.
The data related to cloud game subscriptions are also interesting: in Europe, only 6.1% of users aged 16 to 74 who had used the Internet in the three months before the survey had subscribed to games, while Italy was also below average on this parameter. In this case we are talking about 3.9%: so it is better than the information, but we are closer to the Eastern European countries than to Germany, France and Spain (more than 6%) or the Scandinavian countries, which are closer to 9% and Norway even more than 12%.
Which category do you fall into? Do you only pay for sports events and series, or do you also subscribe to cloud games and news?
