Revenues for online television and video in Western Europe will more than double from $6.40 billion to $14.64 billion between 2015 and 2021. Three out of ten television households in the region will subscribe to an online video service by 2021, producing over 53 million subscriptions.
The figures are from Digital TV Research in its Western Europe OTT TV and Video Forecasts.
Subscription services will become the main revenue source for these ‘over the top’ television and video services in 2018, before advertising supported services once again take the lead in 2020.
Subscription revenues will reach $5.63 billion a year in 2021, up from $2.10 billion in 2015, with the United Kingdom delivering $1.51 billion.
Advertising revenues will reach $5.79 billion a year by 2021, an increase of $3.00 billion on 2015. The United Kingdom will account for $2.33 billion of this.
Rental revenues will reach $1.32 billion in 2021, while download to own or electronic sell through retail revenues will approach $1.90 billion.
Simon Murray, who produced the report, said: “OTT adoption is already high in Scandinavia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, but it has been much more muted in other countries such as France, Spain and Portugal.”
Sweden will have more online television and video subscribers than Spain in 2021, despite only having a quarter of the population. Despite this, subscriber numbers will quadruple in France and Italy between 2015 and 2021 and will grow eightfold in Spain.
Total online television and video revenues in Eastern Europe will grow from $0.45 billion in 2015 to reach $1.98 billion in 2021.
There are forecast to be 19.71 million online television or video subscribers in Eastern Europe by 2021. More thank half of them will be in Russia.
A report from Pyramid Research says increasing consumer appetite for on-demand video services presents an opportunity for operators to complement their core portfolio of services and add new revenue streams.
Analyst Stephanie Char wrote: “OTT players should focus on domestic content and local languages to boost the uptake of their services and revenue. Content is vital to any successful paid video service. However, linguistic diversity in the European markets has posed a challenge to OTT service providers. The lack of availability of foreign content in local languages limits market penetration for international OTT players.”
The Western Europe OTT TV & Video Forecasts and Eastern European OTT TV & Video Forecasts reports are published by Digital TV Research. OTT Video in Europe: Focus on domestic content and local languages to boost take up of services. is published by Pyramid Research.