IHS: MENA Pay-TV Market Booming

LONDON: A new report from IHS reveals that the pay-TV market in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region saw rapid growth in 2015, passing the billion-euro mark in revenues for the first time.

The report, entitled Middle East and North Africa Pay TV Market Monitor, finds that the number of pay-TV households grew 10 percent in 2015 to 4.95 million. Revenues from primary households’ subscriptions grew 37 percent, from €852 million ($962 million) in 2014 to €1.17 billion ($1.3 billion) in 2015, the report noted. “Pay TV in the Middle East and North Africa region is growing rapidly and faster than any other region we analyze,” said Constantinos Papavassilopoulos, senior analyst at IHS Technology.

IHS forecasts that pay-TV subscribers will increase to 6.54 million by the end of 2020, up 32 percent on the end of 2015 and representing a CAGR of 6 percent over the five-year period. IHS expects that the positive momentum in the pay-TV market will continue for the next five years, with revenues almost doubling to just over €2 billion ($2.24 billion) in that time frame. The growth will be due to the enhanced level of competition between the major operators, the introduction of TV Audience Ratings Systems in the Gulf States, the expansion of fibre networks, which facilitate the offering of premium pay-TV services and the growth of the SVOD OTT services.

“The online-video market is very nascent,” Papavassilopoulos said. “IHS put broadband penetration at 56 percent of households at the end 2015. However, due to the Iranian government policy of regulating access to the internet for its citizens, broadband speeds are lower than in neighboring Arab states. Content will also have to be carefully chosen to appeal to the Iranian audience. Simply repurposing content that was made for wider Arabic audiences will not work for Iran.”