Spain’s expenditure on pay-TV rises steadily

Iñaki Ferreras ©RapidTVNews | 11-05-2012



Spain’s households spending on pay-TV increased 5.4% in the last quarter of 2011 versus the same quarter of 2010, resulting in revenues amounting to €291 million.

According to the latest wave of the panel 'ICT in Spanish households' National Observatory of Telecommunications and Information Society (ONTSI), such a performance is a healthy riposte after a poor start to 2011.

On average, households with pay-TV—whether by satellite, telephone operator or other platform such as pay DTT—spent €29.5 per month on some sort of premium offering, 4.85% more than in the same quarter of 2010.According to the report, nearly a quarter (22.8%) of Spanish households, about 3.8 million, feature pay-TV and of this total, 1.67 million relate to offers of pay channels for cable. Pay satellite followed with 1.1 million homes and ADSL operators boasted 788,000 homes.

In terms of growth, cable grew 2.76% and pay-TV over ADSL an impressive 30.24%. Meanwhile, the number of satellite pay-TV households dipped 7.5%.However, the satellite pay-TV sector still generates the most revenue, with €172 million, up 6.8% over the same period of 2010, followed by cable, with €88 million (up 25.71%) and TV over ADSL, with €32 million, a fall of 27.27%.

For those who did not have a pay-TV service, 78.5% indicated that the main reason was a sufficient supply of free channels followed by cost of service (36%).