NTV+ sees strong growth for OTT TV service

Russian pay TV provider NTV+ saw the number of paying subscribers to its recently-launched OTT TV service grow 3.5 times in the first quarter of 2018 to reach 41,000, making the service the group’s fastest growing business area.

The OTT TV service is available both to current NTV+ subscribers and to those that don’t take the service. Among subscribers that do not already take the NTV+ pay TV service, the OTT TV offering’s base grew by 47%, delivering ARPU of RUB420 (€6), some RUB50 higher than ARPU for satellite customers.

NTV+ launched an updated multiscreen OTT TV offering on February 1, with marketing focused on existing satellite pay TV subscribers. The group said that it signed up an average of 250 subscribers a day to the service during March.

NTV+ also recently made the service available to Apple TV, Android TV boxes and smart TV platforms in addition to the web, iOS and Android mobile devices and introduced data-driven content recommendations.

NTV+ CEO Mikhail Demin said that the company had now developed significant internal expertise in OTT TV and that the service now had a solid subscriber base. He said that NTV+ would look to create and upgrade new and existing channels for content distribution.

In other Russian news, fixed-line service provider ER-Telecom is merging its operation in the Bryansk region with Briansk Sviaz-TV-owned Bryansk Cable Networks.

According to reports, ER-Telecom CEO Andrei Kuzyaev said that the merger would create the biggest telecom operator in the Bryansk region.