Digital TV Research: OTT to spur TV revenue growth in 2018

Global revenues from pay TV and over-the-top services are set to climb this year, with OTT gains more than compensating for a decline in pay TV revenues, according to Digital TV Research.

The report claims that global revenues from traditional pay TV and OTT TV episodes and movies will climb from US$254 billion in 2017 to US$265 billion in 2018 – despite pay TV revenues falling by US$4.4 billion in 2018.

“OTT TV episode and movie revenues, including AVOD, will climb by US$15.4 billion in 2018 so OTT’s share of the total will double from 13% in 2015 to 26% in 2018,” said Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV Research.

Despite pay TV revenues falling, the number pay of subscribers is expected to climb from 922 million in 2015 to 1.032 billion by the end of 2018. SVOD subscriptions are tipped to climb by 304 million over the same period to reach 474 million.

Combined, the total number of TV subscriptions are due to increase 38% from 1.09 billion in 2015 to 1.51 billion by the end of 2018. “Therefore, SVOD’s share of the total will double from 16% in 2015 to 31% in 2018,” according to the report.