Advanced Television

Research: Africa to gain 17m pay-TV subs

January 6, 2020

Africa will have 47.26 million pay-TV subscribers by 2025, up from 30.70 million at end-2019, according to Digital TV Research. Nigeria will contribute 10 million subscribers by 2025 – having overtaken South Africa in 2020.

African subscriber numbers will climb by 54 per cent between 2019 and 2025, but pay-TV revenues will rise by only 31 per cent – indicating that subscribers will pay less. Pay-TV revenues will reach $7.20 billion by 2025, up by $1.72 billion on 2019.

Simon Murray, Principal Analyst at Digital TV Research, said: “Despite the strong subscriber growth, competition is intense. Prices and ARPUs are falling as rivals fight to gain subscribers.”


Three groups accounted for 93 per cent of Sub-Saharan Africa’s pay TV subscribers in 2019 – although this proportion will fall to 88 per cent by 2025. Each of the three main groups provides a satellite TV platform and a pay DTT platform.

Multichoice had 14.56 million subs across satellite TV platform DStv and DTT platform GOtv by end-2019. This total will grow to 18.05 million by 2025, with a marked slowdown in satellite TV growth.

France’s Vivendi had 4.73 million subs to its Canal Plus satellite TV platform and Easy TV DTT platforms by end-2019. Its total will climb to 7.35 million by 2025.

StarTimes/StarSat will enjoy the most impressive growth: from 9.10 million subs at end-2019 to 16.39 million by 2025.

 

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