Half of CEE homes have signed up to pay TV, says Ovum

Adam Thomas

More than half of homes in eastern Europe have signed up to pay TV services, creating a market that could be worth almost US$11 billion (€8.8 billion) by 2019, according to research by Ovum. 

Ovum predicts that ARPU levels in the region are now likely to rise after a period when a plethora of low-cost service launches kept prices down. The research group predicts that ARPU across the region will grow from US$9.07 a month last year to US$9.90 by 2019.

Pay TV penetration varies across the region, with the Czech Republic and Poland’s respective pay TV markets already reaching a state of maturity, while Russia and Serbia are still in a high-growth phase, according to the research group.

Adam Thomas, Ovum’s lead analyst for global TV markets said: “Piracy and low levels of disposable income have been holding back the TV business in Eastern Europe for years. But the subscriber scale generated by these new services is now being exploited by the rollout of more sophisticated TV services. The trend we have found is a focus towards monetization and away from purely growing subscriber numbers.”