Pay TV growth in Portugal

The number of pay TV subscribers in Portugal has increased, despite cord-cutting trends across Europe.

According to regulator ANACOM, 94.2% of households in the country subscribed to pay TV services in H1 2021. This was up 5% year-over-year.

Overall, there were 4.3 million subscribers to subscription TV signal distribution service, up 147 thousand subscribers (+3.5%) compared to the same period of 2020.

A contributing factor to growth was due to offers around FTTH, which added 300,000 subscribers compared to the same period of 2020 for a total of 2.3 million subscribers. 

FTTH has been the main form of access to this pay TV service since 2018, and represented 54.4% of total subscribers in H1. Cable was the second-most used (30.1%) followed by satellite (10%) and ADSL (5.5%).

In terms of providers, MEO was the largest pay TV operator with 40.4% of the market. This was followed by Grupo NOS (38.2%), Vodafone (17.8%) and NOWO (3.4%). Vodafone and MEO acquired the most subscribers, increasing their shares of subscribers by 1.1% and 0.5% respectively. Grupo NOS dropped 1.2% of subscribers, while NOWO was down 0.3%.

Overall, there were 4.283 million pay TV subscribers in the country by the end of H1, up from 4.137 million at the end of the year-ago half.