Eastern Europe pay TV revenue growth to slow as subscriber numbers flatten out

Pay TV revenues from eastern Europe will grow by 17% between now and 2020, a significant slowing down of growth relative the first half of the decade, according to Digital TV Research’s latest report.

According to the Digital TV Eastern Europe Forecasts report, pay TV revenues from the region will reach US$7.269 billion by 2020, up US$1 billion on the 2014 figure. Overall, pay TV growth between 2010-20 will have been about 45%, according to the report.

Russia will contribute US$2.29 billion, or 31% of the total, to pay TV revenues in 2020 – overtaking Poland as the market leader this year. Russia will be responsible for nearly two-thirds of the region’s US$1 billion additional pay TV revenues between 2014 and 2020, according to the report.

Digital pay TV revenues will reach US$7 billion by 2020, compared to US$4 billion in 2010. Digital cable revenues will more than double between 2014 and 2020, with IPTV up by 56% and pay DTT up by 53%. Cable TV revenues overall will remain more or less flat, with analogue revenues falling from US$1.5 billion to US$0.3 billion between 2014-2020, according to the report.

Satellite TV revenues, which still account for the lion’s share of revenues, will only grow by 17% over the same period, according to Digital TV Research.

The number of digital pay TV subscribers has grown from 25.8 million, or 20.7% of TV households, in 2010 to 51 million, or 40.0% of TV homes, in 2014 and is set to grow to 76.7 million, or 59.4% of TV households, by 2020.

Total cable subscriptions will fall by 8.9 million between 2010 and 2020. Digital cable subscribers will grow from 4.6 million to 27.6 million, but analogue subscribers will fall from 36.8 million to 4.9 million over the same period. Overall cable penetration will reach a quarter of TV households by 2020, down from a third in 2010.

Pay TV subscriber growth overall is almost tapped out, according to the report. Pay TV will be taken by 63.2% of the region’s TV homes in 2020, up from 50.1% at end-2010, but only up from 60.9% at end-2014, meaning there will be 19 million more pay TV subscribers between 2010 and 2020, with Russia supplying about 12 million of this total. Pay TV penetration across the region in 2020 will range from 89% in Estonia to only 25% in Ukraine, according to Digital TV Research.