MENA SVOD growth continues at pace
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Rebecca Hawkes
| 28 January 2019

Subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) revenues across the Middle East and North Africa, including Israel and Turkey, are set to more than triple by 2024, according to a new report.

Regional SVOD revenues will climb by US$1.51 billion from the 2018 figure to reach $2.13 billion by 2024, according to Digital TV Research.

Turkey holds top spot in the revenue league, and will continue to do so, tripling its over-the-top (OTT) revenue to $556 million by 2024, a leap of $373 million from 2018.

Significant growth in Saudi Arabia’s streaming market will result in a quadrupling of revenues to $402 million in 2024, placing the Kingdom in second place. Israel will follow, accumulating SVOD revenues of $398 million, said the analysts.

“We forecast 26.51 million SVOD subscriptions [a SVOD subscriber can have more than one subscription] by 2024, up from 11.31 million recorded by end-2018. Turkey will remain the leader with 11.52 million subs by 2024,” said Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV Research.

“We forecast 11.87 million SVOD subscriptions in the 13 Arabic-speaking countries covered in this report by 2024 – nearly triple the 4.13 million recorded at end-2018.”
The top eight platforms in the 13 Arab countries covered in the report will remain as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Icflix, Starz Play, iflix, OSN’s Wavo, beIN Connect and MBC’s Shahid Plus, between them retaining 95% of SVOD subscribers in 2024.

By 2024, Netflix will be the largest MENA SVOD platform across the Middle East and North Africa, with 7.71 million paying subscribers. This compares to 3.11 million subscribers in 2018. In terms of the 13 Arab countries covered in the report, by 2024 Netflix will have 4.22 million subscribers.

With 2.98 million subscribers by 2024, Starz Play is forecast to be the second most popular premium video streaming platform in the Arab countries. Its subscription base will reach 2.98 million by 2024, up from 1.09 million in 2018, said Digital TV Research. In third place, Shahid Plus will have acquired 1.81 million paying subscribers by 2024; six times its base in 2018.

Turkey’s SVOD subscriptions league leader in 2024 will be Turkcell with 4.75 million, followed by Tivibu with a subscriber base of 3.14 million. Netflix will be the third most popular paid streaming service in the country, added analysts.