Global pay TV revenues to stay flat, despite subscriber increases

Subscription and pay-per-view revenues for the top 522 pay TV operators globally will remain flat at around US$185 billion between 2016 and 2022, according to new research.

Digital TV Research’s Global Pay TV Operator Forecast report claims that the revenue figure will stay static despite these 522 operators adding some 120 million subscribers over the same time period – from a collective 839 million in 2016 to 963 million by 2022.

“As global revenues are flat this can mean only one thing: the top operators will lose revenues. In fact, 114 of the 522 operators will lose TV revenues between 2016 and 2022,” said Digital TV Research principal analyst, Simon Murray.

The report predicts that the revenue share for the top 10 operators will fall from 55% in 2016 to 51% in 2022, while the share of the top 50 operators will fall from 75% in 2016 to 73% in 2022.

However, the top 50 operators are expected to still account for two-thirds of the world’s pay TV subscribers over the next five years, as they did at the end of 2016.

According to the research, China Radio & TV was by far the world’s largest pay TV operator by subscribers, with 227 million at the end of 2016 – “more than the next 11 operators combined”.

However, by revenues China Radio & TV ranked fifth in 2016 with revenues of US$9.06 billion – behind four US pay TV operators.

AT&T took the top spot with revenues of US$30.7 billion, followed by Comcast (US$21.7bn), Charter (US$16.3bn), Dish Network (US$13.6bn).

The forecast covers 522 operators across 135 countries with 758 platforms – 144 digital cable, 128 analogue cable, 292 satellite, 128 IPTV and 66 DTT.