Three-quarters of the pay television operators in the world will gain subscribers between 2018 and 2024 and two-thirds will increase their revenues. A forecast covering over 500 operators worldwide suggests that they will gain a total of 47 million subscribers in five years.
The top 10 operators had 45% of all television subscribers in 2018. The top 50 accounted for two-thirds of subscribers and that proportion is not expected to change over the following five years.
Between them the top 10 accounted for 452 million subscribers in 2018, a number that is forecast to increase slightly by 8 million to 460 million in 2024.
The operators ranked between 11 and 50 will gain 9 million, while those ranked between 51 and 100 will gain a further 8 million.
“China Radio and TV is the world’s largest pay TV operator by a long, long way,” said Simon Murray of Digital TV Research. It had 185 million subscribers at the end of 2018, accounting for 18% of the global total, as much as the next four operators combined. However, it is forecast to lose 25 million subscribers by 2024, mainly to other operators and online video services.
The Global Pay TV Operators Forecasts report covers 505 operators across 135 countries. It predicts that subscription and pay per view revenues will fall by $21 billion between 2018 and 2024 to $161 billion. Most of these losses will be borne by the top 10 operators, with nine of them predicted to lose revenues over the five-year period.