Eastern European pay-TV set for short-term decline
Details
Joseph O'Halloran
| 24 April 2019

A Digital TV Research study is predicting continued tough times for pay-TV in Eastern Europe, with challenging macroeconomic conditions driving a 2.5 million fall in the number of TV households between 2018 and 2024.

Specifically in Eastern Europe Pay TV Forecasts report the analysis predicts that the number of pay-TV subscribers in Eastern Europe will decline from 82.33 million at end-2018 to 78.64 million in 2024. As a result, pay-TV revenues in Eastern Europe are set to peak at $6.95 billion in 2019 before slowly falling to $6.59 billion by 2024.

Overall, the number of digital pay-TV subscribers is forecast to increase by 13 million between 2018 and 2024 to 78 million – or up by 21%, while the number of pay-TV subs will fall in 10 countries between 2018 and 2024.Russia is set to account for half of the region’s pay-TV subscribers in 2024 even though it is projected to lose 2.88 million pay-TV subscribers between 2018 and 2024.

One of the key dynamics of the region has been increasing digital conversion and the report calculates that analogue cable revenues will drop by $844 million over this period, with digital pay-TV revenues increasing by $502 million. Even though Eastern Europe is slowly ridding itself of the legacy of analogue cable TV, the Eastern Europe Pay TV Forecasts report found that there were still 17.67 million analogue cable subscribers by the end of 2018. This total will fall to 568,000 by 2024.