Digital pay TV numbers in Eastern Europe to grow 27% by 2023

The number of digital pay TV subscribers in Eastern Europe will grow by 27% between 2017 and 2023, according to Digital TV Research.

The new study claims that digital pay TV subscriber numbers in the region will grow from 61.57 million in 2017 to 78.08 million in 2023 – with Russia to account for half of these subscribers in 2023.

However, over the five-year forecast period the total number of pay TV subscribers is expected to fall in 10 of the 22 countries covered by the report, including Russia, due to declines in analogue pay TV.

Pay TV revenues overall are also expected to slowly decline in Eastern Europe from a peak of US$6.53 billion in 2017 to US$6.33 billion by 2023 as analogue cable revenues fall by US$1 billion and digital pay TV revenues grow by a smaller US$769 million.

“Eastern Europe is slowly ridding itself of the legacy of analogue cable TV,” said Simon Murray, Digital TV Europe’s principal analyst.

“Twenty million households still subscribed to analogue cable at end-2017 – more than digital cable. Many of these homes receive very basic packages; often as part of their rent.

“Some of the remaining analogue cable subs do not want to convert to more expensive digital pay TV platforms and will therefore switch to DTT.”

The number of analogue pay TV homes in Eastern Europe is expected to fall from 19.96 million in 2017 to just 1.08 million in 2023.