Pay-TV Subscriptions Increase Globally

LONDON: The 100 top pay-TV services in the informitv Multiscreen Index gained nearly 4 million subscribers in the second quarter of 2015, with operators in Europe, the Middle East and Africa reporting the greatest gains.

Operators in EMEA added 2.35 million digital subscribers. Despite declines in the U.S., there was an overall increase across North, Central and South America of 230,000.

Cable companies added the most subs in the period, with 1.82 million additions worldwide; satellite and telco services each added around 1 million.

The top ten services in the Multiscreen Index each have more than 10 million subscribers; between them, they added 1.4 million digital TV homes in Q2, reaching a total of 141.4 million. The ten services with the largest gains added a total of 3.53 million, while the ten with the largest losses shed 570,000.

Also, 75 of the 100 services in the index now offer some form of multiscreen access on screens in addition to the traditional television, such as a phone or tablet, computer or other network-connected device.

“While many services in the United States lost television customers, the worldwide trend shown by our regular report is of organic subscriber growth of around 1 percent a quarter,” said Dr. William Cooper, the editor of the informitv Multiscreen Index. “We also expect consolidation to continue as service providers achieve growth through economies of scale.”