Eastern Europe to See Growth in Digital Pay-TV Subs

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The number of digital pay-TV subscribers in Eastern Europe is forecast to increase from 25.49 million in 2010 to 61.57 million in 2017 and onto 78.08 million by 2023, according to Digital TV Research.

The Eastern Europe Pay TV Forecasts report states that digital pay-TV subs will increase by 27 percent between 2017 and 2023. Russia will account for half of the region’s pay-TV subscribers in 2023; however, Russia will lose 1.5 million pay-TV subs between 2017 and 2023. The number of pay-TV subscribers will fall in 10 of the 22 countries covered in the report between 2017 and 2023.

Revenues for pay TV in Eastern Europe hit a peak of $6.53 billion in 2017 and will slowly decline to $6.33 billion by 2023. Analog cable revenues will dip by $1 billion over this period, and digital pay-TV revenues will increase by $769 million to $6.25 billion.

Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV Research, said: “Eastern Europe is slowly ridding itself of the legacy of analog cable TV. Twenty million households still subscribed to analog cable at end-2017—more than digital cable. Many of these homes receive very basic packages; often as part of their rent. Some of the remaining analog cable subs do not want to convert to more expensive digital pay-TV platforms and will, therefore, switch to DTT.”