North American pay subs to fall 12%, stats show

Traditional North American pay TV revenues from subscription and on-demand services are due to fall by 11.7% between 2014 and 2020, according to new stats by Digital TV Research.

The forecast claims that North American pay TV revenues peaked at US$102.86 billion in 2013 and will fall by US$12.04 billion over the six-years from 2014 to 2020, reaching US$90.71 billion in 2020.

Over this time period, digital cable revenues are tipped to fall by US$9.32 billion, while analogue cable revenues will fall from US$3.66 billion in 2014 to nothing in 2020. Satellite TV revenues will narrow by US$1.23 billion, while IPTV revenues are set to by $2.17 billion, according to the research.

“Satellite TV will overtake cable to become the largest pay TV platform earner in 2019. However, satellite TV revenues will fall by US$1.2 billion between 2014 and 2020 – to US$40.69 billion,” said Digital TV Research.

“Although there has been a recent slowdown in subscriber growth, the number of homes paying for IPTV will climb by 23% between 2014 and 2020 to reach 18.05 million – or to 13.5% of TV households.”

While the number of traditional pay TV subscribers will remain flat at 110 million, pay TV penetration is predicted to drop from 86.7% in 2010 to 82.6% by 2020 as the number of TV households climbs.

Revenues from over-the-top services are expected to “paint a much brighter picture,” climbing from US$6.85 billion in 2014 to US$10.39 billion in 2020 – with most of these revenues predicted to come from existing pay TV subscribers.

“The number of SVOD subscribers will reach 66.85 million in 2020, up from 50.62 million in 2014 and 16.68 million in 2010. SVOD revenues will reach $6.91 billion in 2020, up by $2 billion on 2014,” said Digital TV Research.