On-demand TV revenues on course to hit $6bn

Forecasts for almost 100 countries show that revenues from on-demand TV shows and movies will hit US$6 billion by 2018. That compares with the US$4.2 billion generated in 2012.

The latest projections, from Digital TV Research, exclude sport and adult programming and revenues from SVOD packages and OTT services.

They show that the US will remain the single largest revenue generator for on-demand TV and film, although its proportion of the overall pie will shrink with China, Japan and India will all registering strong growth over the next five years (see picture).

Chinese on-demand revenues will more than double over the measurement period and Indian revenues more than triple.

“On-demand TV generated just 2.3% of the US$184 billion total pay TV revenues in 2012,” noted report author Simon Murray. “However, the on-demand proportion will grow to 2.9% of the US$203 billion total in 2018. Growth in on-demand TV revenues in some mature markets will not be enough to compensate for falling subscription revenues.”

By platform, digital cable on-demand TV revenues are forecast to increase by US$1 billion between 2012 and 2018 to reach US$2.8 billion. IPTV on-demand TV revenues will nearly double over the same period to US$1 billion by 2018.

Satellite on-demand TV revenues will also rise, but only by 22% over the same period to reach US$1.8 billion.

Most of the digital terrestrial TV on-demand revenues will be confined to Western Europe and principally Italy.