Analyst: Pay-TV subs up, revenues down
September 11, 2019
Analyst firm Digital TV Research forecasts 60 million additional pay-TV subscribers between 2018 and 2024 to take the global total to 1.08 billion. China will provide 19 million additional subs and India 26 million. However, the US will lose 14.4 million pay-TV subscribers between 2018 and 2024 – down by 16 per cent.
“We have updated our forecasts based on June 2019 reports,” advises Simon Murray, Principal Analyst at Digital TV Research. “The US is the world’s worst performer – with no uplift expected over the next five years. Other countries will experience a slowdown – or even some small declines in subscriber numbers – but no other country will match the gloomy projections for the US.”
China will continue to supply a third of the world’s pay-TV subscribers, with 356 million expected by end-2024. India will bring in another 17 per cent of the total by 2024 – or 184 million. Therefore, China and India will together provide half the world’s pay-TV subscribers by 2024.
IPTV is the pay-TV winner. IPTV will add 100 million subscribers between 2018 and 2024 to take its total to 357 million. Pay IPTV penetration will climb to a fifth of TV households by 2024, up from only 2.5 per cent at end-2010 and 15.4 per cent at end-2018.
Global pay-TV revenues [subscription fees and PPV movies and TV episodes] peaked in 2016 at $205 billion (€18.6bn). Revenues will fall by 17 per cent to $171 billion in 2024. This is lower than 2010 – despite the number of pay-TV subscribers rising by 359 million between 2010 and 2024. US pay-TV revenues peaked in 2015, at $106 billion, but the total will drop to $70 billion in 2024.