DIRECTV tops struggling Venezuelan pay-TV sector
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Juan Fernandez Gonzalez
| 13 March 2018

In a Venezuelan pay-TV market which has lost 200,000 households over the last year, AT&T’s DIRECTV has taken the lead, accounting for nearly 43% of total subscribers.

According to the latest figures released by the country’s telecom authority Conatel, Venezuela had 4.81 million pay-TV subs by the end of Q2 2017, 3.8% less than a year before.

Since it reached its peak in Q4 2015, the market has been declining, dropping subscribers and seeing falling service penetration. In fact, at the beginning of 2016, almost 68% of Venezuelan households had pay-TV, while penetration had fallen to 63.6% by Q2 2017.

Penetration is above the average in Distrito Capital (Caracas), Miranda and Carabobo, three regions that have over 1.5 million subscribers between them.

Regarding pay-TV providers, DIRECTV leads the market with 2.06 million subscribers and a 42.8% market share, followed Intercable (15.2%), Cantv (14.1%) and Telefónica Movistar (9.4%).

Over two-thirds of Venezuelan subscribers get their service through direct-to-home (DTH) satellite technology.