Dutch TV market still in steady decline

Thursday, June 9th, 2016 

Dutch TV market still in steady decline, almost 90% is digital

HOUTEN, The Netherlands — The Dutch TV market continued its steady decline with a quarterly loss for the fourth quarter in a row, to end March 2016 with slightly more than 7.8 million connections, according to Telecompaper’s latest quarterly report on the Dutch Television Market. During the quarter the market decreased by 8,000 connections or 0.1 percent, although digital TV grew by 0.4 percent. This was not enough to offset the quarterly drop of 4.7 percent for analogue TV connections. At the end of the first quarter, almost 90 percent of the TV connections were digital.

KPN continued to grow its share of the Dutch TV market, at the expense of cable operator Ziggo. KPN added 0.3 percentage points of market share in Q1 2016 to take 29.2 percent of subscribers, while Ziggo lost 0.5 percent points for a share of 51.7 percent. KPN’s growth is mainly driven by IPTV via either fibre or DSL, growing by 2.8 percent to 1.93 million. KPN’s total customer base (including Digitenne and analogue TV via fibre from former Lijbrandt customers) grew by 1.3 percent during the quarter to 2.28 million. On the digital TV market, KPN won 0.4 percentage points of market share in the quarter to reach 32.2 percent of subscribers.

“Ziggo has been unable to halt the ongoing decline in cable’s share,” said Telecompaper analyst and report author Kamiel Albrecht. “The new Ziggo Sport channel, launched exclusively for Ziggo TV subscribers, may be helpful for customer retention but is unlikely to be enough to return the company to growth.”

Despite losing customers in Q1, Ziggo is still by far the market leader, with more than 4 million TV subscribers at the end of March 2016. Its digital TV subscriber base fell to 3.3 million, good for 47.1 percent of the digital TV market.

KPN and Ziggo will have fewer customers to compete for in future, as Telecompaper expects the number of TV subscriptions to continue to fall. In the five years to 2020, the total TV market is expected to show an average annual decrease of 0.6 percent. Almost all households already have a TV connection and fewer are taking subscriptions for second TVs, instead watching video on tablets, computers and other devices. At the same time so-called ‘cord-cutters’ and ‘cord-nevers’ are abandoning traditional TV subscriptions altogether in favour of the growing number of online video services on the market.

Telecompaper estimates that the TV services market* generated EUR 456 million in revenues in the first quarter of 2016, growing by 1 percent during the quarter. In the five years to 2020, TV revenues are expected to show an average annual decrease of 0.1 percent to around EUR 1.8 billion.

* The reported retail revenues are based on revenues from mass market consumer and SOHO subscriptions. The total includes revenues from basic TV subscriptions (digital/analogue), pay-TV services and video-on-demand services and excludes revenues from installation fees and set-top box sales.

Due to continuous improvements in our calculations, the numbers in this press release cannot directly be compared with numbers from earlier press releases sent out by Telecompaper on previous studies of the Dutch television market.

Telecompaper’s ‘Dutch TV Market 2016 Q1’ report provides detailed figures for Q1 2016, comparison with preceding quarters and five-year forecasts for subscriptions, revenues, and provider and technology market shares. Price for 10 users is EUR 795.00. Single-user price for the report is EUR 495.00.