Eastern Europe is set to lose one million subscribers by 2022, according to the latest Digital TV Research report.
The report claims that the TV sector will suffer from a “knock-on effect” from the the poor job prospects in Eastern Europe.
Simon Murray, principal analyst, Digital TV Research, said: “The number of TV households will fall in 18 countries between 2016 and 2022 – with the region’s total declining by almost two million. Pay-TV will struggle, losing one million subscribers over the same period.”
“Eastern Europe is slowly ridding itself of the legacy of analogue cable TV. Belated DTT launches in some countries have resulted in some analog cable TV laggards converting to FTA DTT rather than the (more expensive) digital pay-TV platforms.”
The report states that the number of digital pay-TV subscribers will increase from 25 million (20.2 per cent of TV households) in 2010 to 58 million (45.8 per cent) in 2016 and onto 77 million (61.0 per cent) by 2022.
2017 will be the peak year for pay-TV in Eastern Europe. Analogue cable represented 28 per cent of the 81 million pay TV subscribers at end-2016, so, say Digital TV Research, some of these 23 million subscribers will choose to convert to FTA DTT rather than to a digital pay platform.
