OTT growth behind pay TV revenue decline in Singapore

The increasing focus on OTT video services in Singapore will pull down overall pay TV revenues in Singapore, claims a new report.

According to new figures from GlobalData, the overall pay TV service revenue in the Southeast Asian country will drop by 1.45% between 2020-2025 in spite of solid growth for OTT services. The report estimates that pay TV household penetration in Singapore will drop from 39.3% in 2020 to 33.8% in 2025. 

This stands in contrast to the overall APAC region which will see pay TV household penetration increase from 74.8% to 75.6% during the forecast period.

Part of the reason for this is the migration of StarHub’s cable TV subscribers to IPTV services in 2019, making IPTV the only platform on the Singaporean pay TV services market. The operator’s discounted pay TV plans will see Singtel continue to be the dominant player in the market.

This, combined with the growing adoption of OTT services like Netflix and Disney+, will see overall IPTV subscriptions decline at a 2% CAGR over the forecast period, reaching 0.63 million in 2025. 

Sree Venkatesh, Senior Analyst of Telecoms Market Data and Intelligence at GlobalData, said: “With the increasing shift in TV viewership from traditional platforms to OTT video services, the pay-TV services market in Singapore is bound to decline further through the forecast period and operators have no choice but to offer services at discounted prices to stay relevant in the market.”