Despite what has been a challenging past couple of years for the industry as it fends off the ever-increasing challenge of streaming providers, the worldwide TV market actually grew in the second quarter of the year, according to research from Ampere Analysis. In detail, pay-TV companies throughout the world added more than 3.1 million subscribers in the period.
The Ampere's pay-TV market bellwether report took a set of over 70 reporting companies which account for more than half of the world's 1.1 billion pay-TV subscribers. Across this group of companies, Q2 pay-TV subscriber totals were 0.5% higher than in Q1, indicating that despite the increased economic pressures and cancellation of live sport globally, there was still room for growth, particularly in emerging markets.
However, Ampere stressed that the numbers are highly regional and noted that by excepting China, India and the United States, global net additions across bellwether companies would have seen just 0.1% growth, up from a 0.2% loss in Q1 2020. It added that the seven bellwether companies in the United States have suffered more than 6.3 million net subscriber losses in the past four quarters.
Of the bellwether companies reported, 44% saw growth in the quarter, with positive net additions of nearly 7 million subscribers. This was partially offset by the remaining 56%, which lost a total of nearly 3.9 million customers. The net effect was a growth of just over 3.1 million pay-TV subscribers in the quarter.
China had more than 3.1 million net additions across bellwether companies, and therefore had a significant role in keeping the global pay-TV market buoyant. Outside mainland China, bellwether pay-TV operators in the rest of the world lost around 1.1 million net subscribers in total. The United States is once again the loss leader, seeing losses of 1.4 million subscribers in the quarter across bellwether companies.
“While some countries are seeing pay-TV subscriptions suffer due to the Covid pandemic, particularly caused by the transient loss of sport, there is still growth in the market, driven partly by bundling of services and by emerging markets,” commented Toby Holleran, Senior Analyst at Ampere Analysis. “Cord-cutters in a number of developed territories like Canada — whose pay-TV market continues to mirror its North American neighbour — are being replaced by newer TV customers in emerging markets, leaving the market as a whole stable. But there is a little growth left even in some developed nations such as France and Spain, which are bucking the trend of stagnation in Western territories," he added.