Economic Recession Still Impacting LatAm Pay-TV Market

According to Digital TV Research, fewer than 5 million additional pay-TV subscribers are expected to be added across LatAm between 2017 and 2023, bringing the total to almost 76 million.

Pay-TV penetration is not expected to climb beyond the current 44 percent of TV households, according to the eighth edition of the Latin America Pay TV Forecasts report.

Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV Research, said: “Given its continuing economic and social problems, Brazil lost 1 million pay-TV subscribers between 2015 and 2017. Its peak year of 2014 will not be bettered until 2023.”

Murray continued: “Mexico recorded impressive growth in 2016, but its pay-TV subscriber count fell in 2017. It will continue to decline until a slow recovery starts in 2020. The 2023 total will be just under the 2016 peak. However, it’s not all bad news as Claro and Telefonica will enter Argentina and Mexico, although this is likely to involve OTT.”

In 2016, Mexico overtook Brazil to become Latin America’s largest pay-TV market, despite Brazil having twice as many TV households as Mexico. Brazil is expected to regain its top slot in 2023. Brazil will remain the top country by pay-TV revenues by some distance ($7.01 billion in 2023), followed by Mexico ($2.49 billion) and Argentina ($2.49 billion).

Pay-TV revenues in Latin America—subscriptions and PPV—will grow by just 1 percent between 2017 and 2023 to $19.74 billion. Revenues will fall in 2017, 2018 and 2019 before a slow recovery begins.