According to Digital TV Research, the number of homes paying for telco IPTV in western Europe overtook pay direct broadcast satellite (DBS) TV ones in 2015. The research house expects IPTV subscriptions to climb by nearly 7 million (up by 27%) between 2015 and 2021. IPTV revenues are expected to reach $5.77 billion in 2021, up by $1.2 billion.
However, the number of homes paying for satellite TV is expected to fall by 300,000 between 2015 and 2021. This is due mainly to some operators, especially in Spain and Italy, converting their DTH subs to more lucrative bundles on their broadband networks. Satellite TV revenues are expected to fall for every year from 2011 and to decline by $1 billion between 2015 and 2021.
Western European pay TV is fast maturing, with penetration only forecast to grow from 56.8% at end-2015 to 59.5% in 2021. The number of pay TV subscribers is expected to climb from 97.4 million in 2015 to 104.3 million in 2021.
So pay TV subscriptions are expected to only increase by 6.9 million (7.0%) between 2015 and 2021. However, the number of digital pay TV subs is expected to increase by 19.0% (nearly 17 million) over the same period. Digital cable subs are expected to increase by almost 10 million.