For at least the last 15 years, predictions have been bandied about that traditional pay TV services in the United States were nearing their expiration date. While some of those prophesies proved out as too early or too exaggerated, recent data continues to flow in suggesting cord cutting has indeed gone on a tear in the last few years. For example, The Diffusion Group released analysis last week indicating more than half of U.S. subscribers who have cancelled their legacy pay TV service did so in 2015 and 2016 alone.
However, the picture of the overall pay TV market is less clear if you consider services outside the United States.
“Doom mongers in the U.S. have been predicting the demise of pay TV for some time. Although the U.S. is losing pay TV subs, there is still a lot of life left in the sector,” Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV Research, says. “Furthermore, they are ignoring the rest of the world. Asia Pacific will add 92 million subs between 2016 and 2022 – and Sub-Saharan Africa will double its total.”
Digital TV Research released a forecast on Monday predicting 134 million additional pay TV subscribers worldwide between 2016 and 2022 to take the total 1.09 billion. Based on forecasts for 138 countries, the research firm foresees the number of pay TV subscribers passing the 1 billion mark in early 2018.
“We believe that the worst of the losses is now over for North America, with ‘only’ 5 million fewer subscribers forecast between 2016 and 2022,” Murray observes.
Excluding analog cable TV, the “Global Pay TV Subscriber Forecasts” report concludes that digital pay TV growth is “really impressive – rocketing from 380 million subscribers in 2010 onto 852 million at end-2016 and 1,088 million by 2022.”
Where will the customers come from? Digital TV Research suggests China will continue to supply about a third of the world’s pay TV subscribers, and India will bring in another 16 percent of the total by 2022. Pay TV subscriber counts will double in 26 countries between 2016 and 2022, the report says, but pay TV subscriber numbers will fall in a further 18 countries.
