African SVOD Revenues to Sextuple by 2025

In Africa, SVOD revenues are expected to grow to $1,055 million by 2025, sextupling the 2019 total of $183 million.

A new report from Digital TV Research forecasts that there will be 9.72 million SVOD subscriptions in Africa by 2025, up from 2.68 million at the end of 2019. With 3.24 million by 2025, South Africa will remain the subscription leader, followed by Nigeria with 2.14 million.

The top six platforms accounted for 86 percent of the region’s SVOD subscribers by end-2019. By 2025, this proportion is expected to climb to 94 percent, with Netflix adding 3.6 million subscribers to total 5 million in the region. Though Disney+ is not expected to launch in Africa until 2022, it’s predicted to have 1.37 million paying subscribers by 2025. Showmax will have 1.41 million paying subscribers, with the majority receiving it for free as part of their premium satellite TV subscription.

Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV Research, said: “Over the last year, there has been a shift from cheap, local platforms towards the multinational players. This means higher revenues as their prices are higher than local players, but it also keeps subscriber numbers low.”