Spanish pay-TV passes 7MN subs barrier and displaces trad TV in value
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Editor
| 27 April 2020

Research from Spanish regulator CNMC has shown that the country’s pay-TV market ended 2019 on a flourish, growing 6.4% on an annual basis in the fourth quarter of the year to total 7.2 million subscribers.

One of the fundamental dynamics of the Spanish TV market is that growth in traditional television revenues has remained constant, while pay-TV continues to grow. Between October and December 2019, free-to-air TV received €521 million, slipping 0.1% compared with the end of 2018, while pay-TV grew 2% annually to generate €565 million.

Most of the pay-TV subs accessed pay-TV services through fibre- or DSL-based IPTV and cable TV which accounted for 4.7 million and 1.3 million subscribers respectively by the end of the quarter. By contrast, satellite TV was found to be continuing on its secular decline with just over half a million customers. For the country’s TV market as a whole, free and paid-for, Television consumption (free and paid) was distributed by 75.7% for DTT, 1.8% for satellite TV, and 22.4% for cable TV and IP TV platforms.

Assessing the source of the business of Spanish TV as a whole, CNMC found a slight decrease in the share of total advertising on private free-to-air television, compared with the growth of pay television during the fourth quarter of 2019. The data showed that commercial TV firms generated 87.6% of total TV advertising revenue on television, a total of €475.4 million, compared with 5.7% for public TV (€31.1 million) and 6.7% from pay-TV (€36.6 million). The country’s big two providers, Mediaset and Atresmedia, claiming as much as 81.7% of all Spanish TV advertising revenue and 87.5% of the total of free-to-air.

Looking forward to business in the forthcoming quarters, the CNMC data found that already in 2020 TV consumption in lockdown Spain has grown steadily. Between October and December 2019, the average consumption of television stood at 3 hours and 31 minutes (211 minutes) per person and day. CNMC calculated that that by the end of In March 2020, due to confinement, the average daily consumption has been 4 hours and 44 minutes per person per day, 51 minutes more than in the same month of the previous year and one hour and thirteen minutes more than in December 2019.