Analyst: W Europe pay-TV subs up, revenues down

March 26, 2018

Western European pay-TV will gain subscribers between 2017 and 2023. Although this only represents a 2.6 per cent increase, the Western Europe Pay-TV Forecasts report from Digital TV Research, estimates nearly 3 million more subs to take the total to 106 million.

“Much of the pay-TV subscriber growth will come from countries with traditionally low pay-TV penetration,” advised Simon Murray, Principal Analyst at Digital TV Research. “More than half of the region’s next additions will come from Italy [up by 960,000 between 2017 and 2023] and Spain [up by 716,000]. Germany will add 913,000 subscribers.”

“However, subscriber numbers will fall for six of the 18 countries covered in the report,” he added. “The UK will be the worst affected, although it will only lose 234,000 subs between 2017 and 2023.”

IPTV is gaining share at the expense of the other pay-TV platforms; having overtaken satellite TV in 2015. IPTV will add 8 million subscribers between 2017 and 2023 but pay satellite TV will lose more than 2 million.

Some telcos (especially Telefónica in Spain and Canal+ in France) are actively moving their satellite TV subs to more lucrative broadband bundles. Spain and France will both lose 1 million pay satellite TV subs between 2017 and 2023. Sky will soon offer its full satellite TV line-up online. Some satellite TV subs are expected to convert to the online platform; resulting in 691,000 fewer pay satellite TV subs in the UK between 2017 and 2023.

Despite subscriptions increasing, pay-TV revenues will fall – by $2.11 billion (€1.7bn) between 2017 and 2023 to $27.27 billion.

Revenues will fall in all but three of the 18 countries covered in the report. The UK will lose $628 million over this period, although it will remain the most lucrative pay-TV market by …