African OTT market to hit US$2 billion

The African OTT market is set to generate US$2 billion within five years, a new report has claimed.

The report from Digital TV Research asserts that OTT movie and TV episode revenues will reach US$2 billion by 2027. This total is triple the 2021 figure of US$623 million.

South Africa and Nigeria, the two largest markets in the region, will account for 56% of the total by 2027. This leaves US$896 million divided between the other 33 countries in the region.

Overall SVOD revenues in Africa are set to reach US$1.66 billion by 2027, up from US$476 million in 2021. Subscriber wise, the region will have 13.72 million SVOD subscriptions by 2027, up from 4.89 million at the end of 2021.

Unsurprisingly, Netflix will continue to be the largest SVOD player with a total of 6.4 million subscribers (up from 2.7 million in 2021), representing 47% of the region’s SVOD subscriptions. Amazon Prime, which has a limited presence on the continent, will have 2.18 million, narrowly beating out Showmax with 2.15 million. Disney+, which currently has no presence in Africa, is expected to surpass 1.3 million subscribers by 2027.

Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV Research, said: “Disney+ will only have a limited roll-out: South Africa (2022) and Nigeria (2023). We do not think that Paramount+, HBO Max or Peacock will start as standalone platforms in Africa. HBO will continue its distribution deal with Showmax. Francophone MyCanal started as a free add-on for Canal Plus pay TV subscribers in 2021. In our last forecasts, we expected MyCanal to be a standalone platform. We now do not believe that this will happen. This will stifle SVOD growth in the Francophone countries.”