The informitv Multiscreen Index of 100 leading multichannel pay television services around the world shows that they collectively gained 3.70 million subscribers in the third quarter of 2017. The January 2018 report shows that India is a major growth market, which will produce the largest single service in the index worldwide, ranked by subscriber numbers.
The global gain of 0.8%, which is similar to the same period a year previously, masks a loss of 0.68 million in the Americas with a rise in Europe of 0.97 million and an increase of 3.42 million in the Asia Pacific region.
India now accounts for four of the top 10 services in the index by subscriber numbers and seven out of the top 10 in the Asia Pacific region. Operators in India also made up six of the ten services worldwide with the greatest subscriber gains in the last quarter.
Dish TV in India is in the process of merging with Videocon d2h, with 15.90 million and 13.25 million subscribers respectively, up by over 400,000 in the third quarter. The transaction received regulatory approval in December, allowing the creation of the largest listed media company in India, which will be known as Dish TV Videocon. With 29.15 million subscribers, it will have scale similar to leading global cable and satellite players in terms of subscribers.
Comcast in the United States is currently the largest single service in the Multiscreen Index, with 21.34 million subscribers. AT&T has 20.61 million DIRECTV subscribers and 3.69 million U-verse customers, plus 720,000 DIRECTV NOW online accounts. As a group, AT&T has 38.51 million television subscribers, including SKY Brazil and PanAmericana.
Average revenues per user are much higher in America than elsewhere. AT&T receives over $40 a month per subscription for linear video, more than ten times that in India.
Nevertheless, unlike mature markets that have approached subscriber saturation, there is significant opportunity for growth in emerging markets.
The index does not include services in China because of the lack of verifiable published data, but that also represents a major growth market.
The Multiscreen Index comprises 100 leading multichannel pay-television and video services based in 36 countries around the world. These collectively account for around 430 million subscribing homes worldwide, which is approaching half the total.
60 of the 100 services in the Multiscreen Index reported net subscriber gains in the third quarter of 2017. In contrast, all of the leading traditional pay-television services in the United States lost subscribers in the third quarter. As a result of consolidation, only nine services in the United States now feature in the Multiscreen Index of 100 leading services worldwide. The top nine services lost 829,000 subscribers between them over the quarter and 2.53 million year on year. However, they still account for 84.44 million television subscribers between them, which is about 70% of all television homes in the United States.