Advanced Television

IPTV leads Spanish pay market, PPV collapses

October 11, 2010

From David Del Valle in Madrid

Telefonica’s IPTV platform Movistar Imagenio continues leading the growth in Spain’s pay-TV market in terms of subscribers, whereas Sogecable-owned DTH platform Digital Plus is losing most.

According to the latest report from the Spanish Telecommunications Market Commission (CMT), Movistar Imagenio captured 140,000 new subscribers to 746,000 in the second quarter of the year. It was the only pay-TV operator that raised its subs, with its competitors in the market increasingly losing their subscribers. Thus, Digital Plus lost 100,000 clients to 1.7 million; cable operator ONO was down 19,000 to 972,000 and Gol TV, the first pay DTT channel stood at 190,378 subscribers. Overall, the number of pay-TV subscribers in Spain –including 425,757 mobile TV subscribers- amounted to 4.53 million, up 8.9 per cent.

In terms of revenues, IPTV and cable led the growth in the second quarter of the year with the former raising from E45 million to E54 million and the latter reaching E77.6 million, up E5 million. Satellite pay-TV’s revenues were E252.1 million against E337 million the same period last year with mobile TV going from E4.9 million in 2009 to E3.51 million this year. By operators, Sogecable’s revenues amounted E252.17 million against last year’s E263 million; ONO’s also dropped to E57 million while Telefonica increased by E15 million its revenues to E52.2 million. The crisis also had a heavy toll on the purchase of football TV matches (from 1,682,373 in the second quarter of 2009 to 312,403 this year) and the consumption of films (from 2,648,961 in 2009 to 1,994,629 this year).

In its report, CMT reveals that the TV advertising market is recovering with private TVs reaching E565.4 million in the second quarter of the year, up 38.8 per cent. That amount means E101 million more than in the first quarter of the year

Categories: Articles, IPTV, Markets, OTT