MENA SVOD set for strong growth

There will be 27.16 million paying SVOD subscriptions for 20 countries in the Middle East and North Africa by 2025, up from 10.95 million recorded at end-2019, according to the latest report by Digital TV Research.

Turkey, which Digital TV Research counts in its MENA area analysis, will remain the country leader, with 11.30 million subscriptions by 2025, according to the report.

Digital TV Research predicts that here will be 12.27 million subscriptions across 13 Arab countries by 2025. This is a tripling from 4.13 million in 2019 – representing faster growth than for the rest of the region. Netflix will bring in five million, followed by StarzPlay (2.39 million) and OSN (2.28 million). These three platforms will generate 78% of the Arab total by 2025, says Digital TV Research.

Simon Murray, Principal Analyst at Digital TV Research, said: “Netflix will remain the platform leader by some distance – more than doubling its subscriber total to 9.81 million by 2025. Its share of the MENA total will remain at around 36%. About half of Netflix’s MENA subscribers will be in the Arab countries.”

“Disney+ will be less of a competitor to Netflix as Disney signed a long-term distribution deal in the Arab countries with OSN. OSN also has exclusive deals with HBO and Paramount+.”