Spain: Football war hits telco revenues
January 31, 2019
From David Del Valle in Madrid
Spain’s pay-TV football war has had a negative impact on all the country’s major telcos. In the third quarter of 2018, as a whole they lost 1.3 per cent of their revenues to €6.08 billion, according to the latest figures from the regulator CNMC.
Orange and Vodafone lost market share whereas Movistar had a slight rise reaching 43 per cent. The fourth largest operator MásMóvil achieved a 6 per cent share being the only operator significantly increasing its revenues. The three largest operators – Movistar, Vodafone and Orange- controlled 79.8 per cent of the revenues, down from 80.5 per cent one year earlier.
FTTH reached 42.9 million versus 35.2 million in September 2017 out of the total broadband market of 53.8 million. The three largest operators control 89.4 per cent of the broadband market, down 2.8 points fewer than the previous year.
As for pay-TV, subscribers grew by 7.4 per cent year on year to 6.9 million with IP gaining 745,000 subscribers in a year.