ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the 2020s consolidation of the Over-the-Top (OTT) TV and video market in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), a region long perceived as lacking quality television traditions and strong industry players. It traces a shift from HBO Europe’s early high-end productions to recent investments of global streamers, which elevated Warsaw to a semi-peripheral hub while treating the rest of CEE as peripheral exploitation markets. In response, regional conglomerates—CME, United Group, and TV3—emerged as dominant players outside Poland, leveraging this asymmetry through hyperlocal, nationally segmented content strategies and bundling media with telecom services. Adopting a critical political economy perspective, the chapter identifies two defining dynamics: the persistence of hyperlocalism in original production and distribution, and the rise of diagonal integration between content and connectivity. These developments reposition CEE not as a passive periphery but as a contested, multipolar streaming landscape shaped by both global market hierarchies and regional agency.
