Eastern European pay TV revenues still climbing

Monday, April 4th, 2016 

Despite the subscriber count increasing by fewer than one million, Eastern European pay TV revenues will increase by 9.9% between 2015 and 2021 to $5.97 billion, according to the sixth edition of the Digital TV Eastern Europe Forecasts report. However, Digital TV Research estimates that pay TV revenues rose by 27% between 2010 and 2015, indicating that much of the fast growth is over.

Source: Digital TV Research Ltd

There will be only 16,000 pay TV subscriber additions between 2016 and 2021 for the 22 countries covered in the report; taking the total to 80.05 million. However as analog cable subs fall, the number of digital pay TV subscribers will increase from 25.84 million (20.7% of TV households) in 2010 to 54.63 million (42.8%) in 2015 and onto 75.73 million (58.9%) by 2021.

So, nearly all of the revenue growth will come from analog cable TV subs converting to more expensive digital platforms. Digital pay TV revenues will increase by $3 billion between 2010 and 2020 to $5.77 billion. They will increase by 32% (or by $1.4 billion) between 2015 and 2021.

Pay TV will be taken by 62.3% of the region’s TV homes in 2021, up from 48.0% at end-2010, but only up from 62.0% at end-2015. This converts to 20 million more pay TV subscribers between 2010 and 2021, but fewer than a million between 2015 and 2021.