Mexico Becomes LatAm’s Largest Pay-TV Market

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LONDON: Mexico overtook Brazil in 2016 to become Latin America’s largest pay-TV market, according to Digital TV Research, despite Brazil having twice as many TV households.

Brazil has been losing subscribers since November 2014, whereas Mexico has benefited from strong adoption of prepaid satellite TV. Mexico will strengthen its position, taking 30 percent of the region’s pay-TV subs by 2022, with Brazil accounting for a quarter of the region’s total.

According to the Latin America Pay TV Forecasts report, there will be 83.47 million pay-TV homes in Latin America by 2022, up by 10.5 million on 2016’s 72.96 million. By comparison, more than 31 million pay-TV subs were added between 2010 and 2016. Pay-TV revenues in LatAm will grow by 7.7 percent—or up by $1.4 billion—between 2016 and 2022 to $19.87 billion. Brazil ($6.9 billion in 2022) will remain the top country by pay-TV revenues by some distance, followed by Mexico ($3.2 billion) and Argentina ($2.2 billion)—Brazilian subscription rates are much higher than Mexican ones (which are low largely due to the popularity of prepaid satellite TV).