Whitepaper | Pay TV and OTT: Partners or Competitors

The lines between pay TV and OTT are becoming increasingly blurred. While pay TV operators and OTT content and app providers still in many cases see each other as competitors, cable and IPTV providers are increasingly looking to open up their platforms to OTT providers via partnerships in order to help sell broadband access. Examples include the numerous cable and telecom service providers in Europe that have done deals with Netflix.

Others – notably satellite pay TV broadcasters ­– still see OTT as a threat rather than an opportunity. However, to make the picture more complex, these broadcasters are increasingly branching out by launching their own complementary OTT services, targeting a different audience in order to head off the threat presented by pure OTT players and expand their subscriber bases.

Finally, content owners and channel providers are themselves getting involved in the distribution business by launching OTT packages, either as an alternative to pay TV distribution in markets where opportunities for the latter are lacking, or to complement pay TV services.

DTVE recently surveyed over 140 senior industry participants from 48 countries, including OTT service providers, triple and quad-play operators, pay TV channel providers, IPTV service providers, free-to-air broadcasters, cable operators and DTH operators, to find out how they viewed emerging models for pay TV, OTT and content providers.

The resulting report, which is now available to download free of charge, provides a fascinating insight into how pay TV and OTT providers view the challenge and opportunities of competing or collaborating to attract subscribers.