IPTV leads pay-TV growth in Spain
April 5, 2012
From David Del Valle in Madrid
The Spanish pay-TV market ended 2011 with 4.4 million subscribers, adding 109,376 clients in a year and with revenues growing 7.5 per cent to €1.1 billion. The latest data from the Telecommunications Market Commission (CMT) reveal that IPTV platforms, namely Movistar Imagenio and Orange TV, took the lion’s share of the new subscribers with 29,416 net additions. Satellite pay-TV lost clients though with a drop of 16,000 to 1.756 million while cable pay TV grew by 30,000 to 1.3 million with IPTV reaching a total of 913,148 subscribers
Despite the overall pay TV growth, the PPV business is in free fall, with operators posting falling revenues. In the fourth quarter, Prisa TV made €246.88 million in PPV revenues, down €8 million against the same quarter in 2010; Telefónica €58.5 million, up €7 million and ONO down €2 million to €54 million.
As a whole, the TV market posted a turnover of €1,09.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2011 with ad revenues falling by €642.1 million.
Spain ended the year with over 11 million broadband lines, with Telefónica accounting for half of the total. 54 per cent of broadband lines gave access speeds of 10 Mbps or more and 6.4 per cent of 30 Mbps or more.