Analyst: African OTT revenues at $1.7bn by 2026
January 11, 2021
African OTT movie and TV episode revenues will reach $1.725 billion (€1.4bn) by 2026 – up from $392 million in 2020, according to the Africa OTT TV and Video Forecasts report from analyst firm Digital TV Research. South Africa will contribute a third of the region’s revenues by 2026, with Nigeria bringing in a further fifth.
SVoD is the main revenue driver by a long way. SVoD revenues will reach $1.48 billion by 2026; up from $299 million in 2020.
Netflix accounted for 57 per cent of the region’s SVoD subscribers by end-2020. Its share will fall to 44 per cent by 2026 (6.26 million subscribers – but triple from 1.99 million in 2020). Disney is not expected to start in the region until 2022, although it will have 3.13 million paying subscribers by 2026.
“Regional players Showmax and MyCanal have upped their game in face of this added competition,” advises Simon Murray, Principal Analyst at Digital TV Research. “Both of these platforms have sister pay-TV companies. However, the SVoD platforms are emerging in their own right.”