Russia: pay-TV grows as cord cutting fails to take hold
October 31, 2019 10.00 Europe/London By Chris Dziadul
Pay-TV revenues in Russia grew by 14.2% to €1.29 billion in 2018.
At the same time, according to the findings of an annual report produced by the European Audiovisual Observatory, from 2017-19 the number of cord cutters was estimated at 4.3% of the population of major cities and shows no sign of increasing.
As of 2018, there were 43.2 million pay-TV subscribers in Russia, or 3.1% more than a year earlier.
Satellite was the most used technology (17.1 million, 16.6 million in 2017), followed by analogue cable TV (11.9 million, 12.2 million), digital cable TV (6 million, 5.7 million) and IPTV (8.2 million, 7.4 million).
OTT revenues in 2018 amounted to €117.4 million, or 9% of the pay-TV market.
J’son & Partners estimates the figure will grow to €315.7 million in 2023 and only five time smaller than the pay-TV market.
As of 2018, according to J’son & Partners, online cinema accounted for 72.5% of OTT TV revenues, followed by 17.6% for TV channels and 9.9% for aggregators.
Meanwhile, the legal video market in 2018 was worth €335.5 million and is forecast to increase to €792.1 million by 2022.
The SVOD market was worth €81.3 million in 2018, equivalent to 24% of total legal video services.
Ivi was the leading player using the monetisation model, accounting for 28.1% of revenues, with second placed Okko claiming 20.9%.
In terms of cord cutting, the number of cord cutters stood at 1.7 million people, or 660,000 households.
Although most viewers of professional online video seem to be unwilling to have a paid subscription., 17% of them have signed up for one at least once.