Euro News: Pay-TV to Add 17.7M Subs; Italian Piracy Declines
July 15, 2019
Despite ongoing consumer migration toward over-the-top video distribution, European pay-TV operators are projected to add 17.7 million subscribers through 2023, according to new data from Dataxis.
How’s that? In Europe, pay-TV consumption is combined with online TV and OTT video (i.e. Netflix, Amazon Prime Video).
Thus, Euro pay-TV growth, which represents an 8.4% increase from the previous-year period, should bring the total to 230 million subs. This growth will be driven by IPTV (+13.1 million subscribers) and OTT (+6.6m), while cable TV should lose 4.6 million subscribers.
Separately, a new study by research firm Ipsos for Italy’s Federation for the Protection of Audiovisual and Multimedia Content found that consumption of pirated video content dropped 8% in 2018.
While the Italian home entertainment consumption of pirated movies, series and TV shows “declined” to 38%, the majority of illegal viewing included movies (33%), series (21%) and TV shows (20%).
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Illegal consumption of live sports (i.e. soccer) increased 34% with 4.7 million people consuming pirated content compared to 3.5 million in 2017.
Ipsos says piracy cost the Italian home entertainment market about €600 million ($676 million), with almost 6,000 jobs at risk.
The Italian economy lost €1.08 billion ($1.21 billion) due to piracy, including a €455 million ($512.6 million) hit to GDP, and €203 million ($228.6 million) in lost tax revenue.
