At least for the next five years, Western Europe looks like it will add pay TV subscribers even in this era of cord cutting, according to Digital TV Research’s new “Western Europe Pay TV Forecasts” report. The firm projects the Western European pay TV market will gain subscribers between 2016 and 2022 – but it will only be a 6.7 percent increase. Overall, that will result in nearly 7 million more subs to take the total to 106 million. Western Europe will cross the 100 million pay TV subs mark in June this year, Digital TV Research projects.

“Better news is that the number of digital pay TV subscribers will increase by 15.6 percent (14 million) over the same period,” Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV Research, observes. “Analog cable subs will fall from 8 million in 2016 to 0.5 million in 2022.”

According to the report, two-thirds of the region’s next additions will come from Italy (up by 1.47 million or 20 percent between 2016 and 2022), Spain (up by 1.36 million or 23 percent), and France (up 1.41 million or 11 percent). The research firm also predicts subscriber growth will be lower than 3 percent for eight of the 18 countries covered in the report.