APAC pay TV revenues to fall by US$1 billion over next five years

Pay TV revenues in the Asia-Pacific region are set to drop by almost US$1 billion by 2025.

A new report from Global Data stated that the APAC market will decrease from US$61.6 billion in 2020 to US$60.8 billion in 2025, largely due to continued decline in cable TV subscriptions and fall in average spend per pay TV account in the region.

As a part of this decline will be a slowdown in some of the most advanced markets in the region, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and Vietnam. This will come as a result of cord-cutting, with users trading traditional pay TV solutions for OTT alternatives.

Cable TV, which is the leading pay TV platform in the region by subscriptions, will see its market share decrease while DTH alternatives will experience growth. 

IPTV services will see a significant rise to take up the majority of pay TV subscriptions, increasing from 42.5% in 2020 to 53.5% by the end of 2025. The increase in demand for IPTV will fail to reverse the declining trend for pay TV services overall.

Kantipudi Pradeepthi, Research Analyst of Telecoms Market Data & Intelligence at GlobalData, said: “There has been a rapid deployment of FTTH/B network in countries such as the Philippines, Thailand, New Zealand and India, which has been a major catalyst for IPTV adoption in the region.

“OTT-based video streaming platforms have caused massive disruption in the traditional pay-TV services in the region. Introducing OTT offerings as a part of their product bundles or partnering with OTT players can help pay-TV operators retain their customer base and improve their content proposition.”

The report also notes that China will go on to account for 80.2% of pay TV subscriptions in the region by the end of 2025.