Mexico leads LatAm pay-TV market
March 20, 2017
Mexico overtook Brazil in 2016 to become Latin America’s largest pay-TV market, despite Brazil having twice as many TV households. Brazil has been losing subscribers since November 2014 whereas Mexico has benefitted from strong adoption of prepaid satellite TV.
Mexico will strengthen its position, taking 30 per cent of the region’s pay-TV subs by 2022, with Brazil accounting for a quarter of the total, according to the Latin America Pay-TV Forecasts report from Digital TV Research.
There will be 83.47 million pay-TV homes in Latin America by 2022 – up by 10.5 million on 2016’s 72.96 million. By comparison, more than 31 million pay-TV subs were added between 2010 and 2016.
Pay-TV revenues in Latin America [subscriptions and PPV] will grow by only 7.7 per cent (or up by $1.4 billion) between 2016 and 2022 to $19.87 billion.
Brazil ($6.9 billion in 2022) will remain the top country by pay-TV revenues by some distance, followed by Mexico ($3.2 billion) and Argentina ($2.2 billion). Brazilian subscription rates are much higher than Mexican ones (which are low largely due to the popularity of prepaid satellite TV).
Two operators dominate pay-TV in Latin America. America Movil had 14.61 million pay-TV subscribers (mostly under its Claro brand) by end-2016 and DirecTV/Sky had 20.49 million. These two companies accounted for 48 per cent of the region’s pay TV subscribers by end-2016.