African SVOD market to grow by five times by 2025

Africa will see significant growth in SVOD as the nascent market continues to mature to a total of 12.96 million subscriptions by 2025.

According to Digital TV Research, this will be a growth of almost five times – up from 2.75 million at the end of 2019.

South Africa will be the largest single market, adding 3 million subs to a total of 4.3 million by 2025. Nigeria meanwhile will also see significant growth, adding 2.1 million to total 2.73 million by the decade’s mid-point.

Unsurprisingly, Netflix will continue its global domination with a total of 5.7 million subscribers in the continent. This is an increase of 1.23 million in 2019. Disney+, while not expected to enter the African market until 2022, is expected to have 2.71 million subscribers by 2025.

Showmax, currently with 585,000 subscribers, will cement its position as the third-largest platform with 1.65 million subscribers.

Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV Research, said: “Local player Showmax will add more than a million paying subscribers, partly due to the launch of its Pro platform and its lower prices for mobile subscribers. It will reach many more homes as a free extension for its pay TV subscribers.”

iRoko, another local player, will be at 586,000 subscribers, while Amazon will grow from 49,000 in 2019 to 456,000 in 2025. Apple TV+ meanwhile ie expected to hit a modest total of 114,000.

The ‘others’ category which contains niche and smaller local streamers, will be at a total of 1.75 million subscribers.