Pay TV grows in Portugal

The number of pay TV subscribers in Portugal reached 3.72 million at the end of the second quarter up 27,000 on the previous quarter, according to statistics compiled by regulator Anacom.

The Portuguese pay TV subscribers total has grown by 3.5% year-on-year.

Anacom said that growth in Pay TV was boosted by the take up of FTTH and FTTB fibre broadband offerings, which attracted an additional 62,000 homes in the second quarter, with the overall total up 28.3% year-on-year.

FTTH/B is now running second to cable as an access technology. Cable acco0unts for 36.4% of pay TV customers, while FTTH/B accounts for 31.9%. DSL platforms accounted for 16.6% of pay TV customers, while some 15.2% of customers received their TV signals via DTH satellite.

Anacom said that about 4.8% of individuals aged 10 and over had a subscription to one of the streaming on-demand services available in Portugal – Netflix, Fox Play, NPlay or Amazon Prime Video.

NOS had the biggest single share of the market, with 43.3%, followed by Meo with a 38.3% share. Vodafone and Nowo – formerly Cabovisão – took third and fourth place with 13.5% and 4.7% respectively.

About 14.3% of pay TV homes had access to premium channels at the end of June, down 3.8% year-on-year. Some 76.1% had access to over 100 channels, up 7.1% on the previous year.

Advanced TV features are increasing in popularity, with about 75% of pay TV subscribers using at least one of them. Automatic digital recording  was the most popu7lar advanced TV feature, followed by the programme guide, HD channels and manual recording.

Anacom said that pay TV revenues including both standalone services and packages including TV amounted to approximately €942 million at the end of the second quarter, up 5.2% year-on-year.