U.S. HISPANIC
Online video subscriptions will exceed the 3 billion barrier by 2027
Maribel Ramos-Weiner| 13 de julio de 2022
Disney anuncia despidos
The forecast for subscriptions to video platforms worldwide will reach the 2 billion mark by 2027, while pay-TV shows a much more mixed picture for development, according to figures from Omdia research.
Omdia’s new Global report: Pay TV & Online Video found that total global subscribers increased from 1.14 billion at the end of 2020 to 1.34 billion at the end of 2021, up 17.7% year-on-year. Omdia is forecasting a further 10.5% growth in 2022 to take the figure to 1.48 billion.
While online video subscription numbers are growing just about everywhere, pay-TV is much more mixed, with Omdia data showing 55 countries growing, 41 declining, and 5 static.
Global pay-TV subscription numbers grew by 0.6% in 2021, from 1.02 billion to 1.03 billion. With competition from online video intensifying, Omdia expects the pay-TV market to exhibit a slow decline looking ahead and forecasts subscription numbers to drop from the 1.03 billion figure to one billion in 2027, down by 1.9%.
Of the 101 pay-TV markets that Omdia tracks in most detail, the research revealed significant fluctuations, with 55 countries still reporting subscription growth, 41 reporting decline, and five essentially static.
Over the next five years, Omdia expects those contrasting fortunes to continue, with countries like Indonesia continuing to post solid increases, while others such as the US, see an ongoing decline.
Although the survey showed the outlook for online video remained very positive, with new services continually entering to market and, essentially, major players still only part of the way through their respective global expansion efforts, Omdia warned that service providers cannot take growth for granted, pointing out that Netflix is expected to lose two million customers in the second quarter of 2022.
“Online video services are continuing to experience impressive growth levels and there is a lot more to come,” said Adam Thomas, senior principal analyst in Omdia’s TV & Online Video team. “Disney+ has enjoyed an incredibly successful launch but there are several more attractive territories for it to enter over the next couple of years. And the same goes for Paramount+, Peacock, and several others. The prospects for the alliance of HBO Max with Discovery+ also look exciting. There are many reasons to be positive for online video’s prospects over the next few years which are reflected in our forecasts.”
“With pay-TV as a whole plateauing, the TV and video business is becoming increasingly reliant on growth from online video. But with that business having been built on high content investment aligned with low subscription prices, a price-sensitive public has come to expect a lot of bang for their buck. The content costs versus pricing balancing act is a tricky one to navigate.”
