European Pay-TV Channel Revenues to Reach $5.5 Billion by 2018

LONDON: Viacom is expected to bring in the highest revenues of any international channel group in Europe in 2013, forecast at $749 million, according to a new report from Digital TV Research.

The TV Channel Revenues in Europe report, which covers 225 international networks from 11 groups, estimates that Eurosport will follow with revenue at $651 million and Discovery at $620 million.

Viacom is expected to remain the largest channel group, reaching $975 million in 2018, when it will again be followed by Eurosport ($801 million) and Discovery ($772 million). (Discovery and Eurosport may have merged operations by then.)

Total revenues for Europe's leading pay-TV channels was $4.21 billion last year; this is expected to grow by 31 percent to $5.52 billion by 2018. Carriage-fee revenue growth is slowing, as markets mature, though it still provides the bulk of the total. Carriage fees contributed $2.91 billion in 2012 and will grow 14.1 percent to $3.32 billion in 2018. Ad revenues are expected to increase by 69 percent, from $1.3 billion in 2012 to $2.2 billion in 2018.

Nicholas Moncrieff, the author of the report, said: “The recession has hurt some regions more than others. The U.K. is buoyant overall, but no growth is expected in Spain & Portugal and Italy until next year. The estimates and forecasts in this report have been prepared using an analysis of a database of hundreds of financial records.”