Portuguese pay TV market sees slight growth

Despite a global trend towards cord-cutting, the pay TV market in Portugal grew in the first quarter of the year.

According to Autoridade Nacional de Comunicações (ANACOM), 94% of households in the country had a pay TV service in Q1 2022, up 0.4% year-over-year.

The total number of pay TV subscriptions was up 126,000 (3%) to a total of 4.4 million. This is, the regulator notes, the lowest percentage growth since the end of 2014.

Despite slowed growth there is growth nonetheless, and this is attributed to offers supported on FTTH which saw a YoY increase of 281,000 (12.4%) to reach 2.5 million subscribers.

FTTH, which has been the main form of access to this service since 2018, accounted for 58.0% of total subscribers in Q1. This is followed by cable TV (29.1%), satellite TV – DTH (8.9%) and ADSL (4.1%).

MEO was the largest pay TV operator with a market share of 40.7%, followed by NOS Group (37.6%), Vodafone (18.5%) and NOWO (3.2%). Vodafone and MEO had experienced the most growth YoY, with the operators increasing their shares by 0.9% and 0.4% respectively. NOS Group and NOWO were down 0.9% and 0.3% respectively.