Digital TV Research: MENA OTT Revenues to Quadruple

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According to Digital TV Research, Middle East and North Africa OTT TV episodes and movies will generate revenues of $1.75 billion by 2022, which is more than four times the $428 million recorded last year.

As per the Middle East and North Africa OTT TV & Video Forecasts report, SVOD’s dominance of the sector will increase. SVOD revenues will reach $1.23 billion by 2022 (70 percent of the OTT total), nearly $1 billion more than the 2016 total (56 percent of OTT revenues). Digital TV Research predicts 17.27 million SVOD homes by 2022, up from 3.74 million recorded by the end of last year. Turkey will continue as the leader by far.

The top six regional platforms (Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Icflix, Starz Play, iflix and Shahid Plus) will make up 39 percent of the region’s SVOD subs by the end of 2022, up from 34 percent in 2016. Excluding Israel and Turkey, these six platforms will account for 78 percent of SVOD subscribers by 2022, down from 88 percent last year.

Netflix will be the largest pan-regional SVOD platform by 2022, with an anticipated 3.26 million paying subs. This is more than five times the 2016 total. Icflix will surpass 2 million subscribers by 2022, quadrupling its 2016 total. Starz Play will add 1.60 million subs. Digital TV Research’s forecast of 695,000 subscribers for iflix by 2022 only covers six of its eight current countries in MENA.

Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV Research, remarked: “A handful of mobile operators such as Orange, Zain, Ooredoo, Etisalat and Vodafone have assets across several countries. SVOD platforms can gain considerable economies of scale by signing distribution deals with mobile operators. Deals between mobile operators and SVOD platforms are already prevalent in the Middle East and North Africa—offering an example for the rest of the world to follow.”