Italy sees SVoD boom
November 23, 2018
From Branislav Pekic in Rome
Italy has seen a huge take-up in SVoD services, rising from 2.3 million subscribers in June 2017 to 5.2 million in 2018.
This includes services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Timvision, Now TV (Sky Italia), Infinity (Mediaset) and Eurosport Player.
Although figures for individual operators are not provided, it is widely believed that the Netflix, which has been present in Italy for 3 years, is the market leader.
The figures from advisory firm EY and published by daily Il Sole 24 Ore, are even more impressive when compared to the estimated 6.5 million subscribers to the country’s two pay-TV platforms (Sky Italia and Mediaset Premium).
According to Fabrizio Pascale, Telco, Media & Technology Med Leader of EY, the video streaming services market has grown both in terms of free and pay-TV services. However, the most significant growth has come from pay platforms that, in mid-2018, counted over 5 million subscribers, more than double compared to last year.
The total number of users (more than one per family) has gone up from 4.3 million to 8.3 million users, while the number of unique users amounts to around 4 million (including those who have more than one subscription).
When the audience for “free” video players like YouTube, Raiplay, Mediaset Play is also taken into account, the total number of free and pay VoD users in Italy reaches 23.8 million, or 68 per cent of total Internet users.
Meanwhile, the latest Communications Observatory of Italian regulator AgCom reveals that Mediaset now leads for average TV market share in June 2018. The commercial broadcaster has 33.7 per cent (+3.7 per cent), ahead of RAI with 33.3 per cent (-2.5 per cent). Comcast/Sky Italia is third with 7.2 per cent (-1.2 per cent), followed by Discovery with 6.5 per cent (-1 per cent) and La7 with 4.7 per cent (+1.1 per cent).