South Korea’s pay-TV base reaches 32.5MN subscribers
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Rebecca Hawkes
| 11 May 2019

Pay-TV subscriber figures in South Korea hit 32.5 million in 2018, the country’s Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) has announced.

With a 47.37% share of the market, IPTV had the largest subscriber base of all the pay-TV platforms with 674,875, having overtaken cable TV in late 2017. Cable operators shed 120,185 subscribers in the second half of 2018, but still controlled 42.67% of the market. Satellite also dropped subscribers, registered 20,565 fewer customers than in the first half of the year.

Over 534,000 pay-TV subscribers were added during the second half of 2018 in South Korea, which the UN estimates has a total population of around 51.3 million.

The pay-TV market is led by KT, with a 21.12% share in the second half of 2018, up from 20.67% in the first half. By the end of the year, SK Broadband claimed second spot with 14.32% of the market, followed by CJ Hello with 12.61%, LG Uplus with 11.93%, and KT Skylife with 9.95%.

South Korea’s video and television market spend looks was estimated to have recorded 8% growth in 2018 to KRW7.8 trillion (nearly US$7 billion), according to Futuresource Consulting. Pay-TV accounted for nearly 70% of overall video spend in 2018, the consultants said.