PAY TV TO REACH 1.06 BILLION GLOBAL SUBSCRIBERS BY 2025

A study conducted by Digital TV Research of pay-TV markets of 138 countries predicts that 35 million additional subscribers will be added to the respective markets between 2019 and 2025, making the global total reach 1.06 billion. “Our forecasts are based on the assumption that professional sports will restart in August following relaxations in the Covid 19 lockdown,”  Simon Murray, Principal Analyst at Digital TV Research said. “If this does not happen, then pay-TV will experience considerable churn.”

The Global Pay TV Subscriber Forecasts report says that excluding analog cable TV, The pay-TV sector is expected to add a further 35 million more subscribers over the next five years, with its growth climbing from 380 million subscribers in 2010 to 990 million at the end of 2019 and on to 1.062 billion in 2015.

The report indicates that IPTV was the leading platform set to add 84 million subscribers between 2019 and 2025, bringing it to a total of 391 million. The platform is also set to forecast its increase of the share of pay-TV subscribers, from 30% in 2019 to 37% in 2025. On the contrary, satellite TV is predicted to lose 4 million subscribers between that timeframe, generating a fifth of pay-TV subscribers by 2025, a 21% decline in 2019.

Cable TV received the most fortune out of the rest of the platforms. According to the study, cable TV will account for 40% of all pay-TV subscribers by 2025, down from 47% in 2019 and an even greater decline from 74% in 2010. There will likely be 430 million cable TV subscribers, both analog and digital, by 2025, 101 million lower than the 531 million recorded in 2010. Surprisingly, there were still 38 million analog cable TV subscribers by the end of 2019. Digital TV Research noted that it was not just analog that is a challenge for the cable industry, the digital sector is primed to lose subscribers, falling from 446 million at end-2019 to 429 million by 2025.