Mediaset Premium, the PPV service distributed over Italy’s DTT network, has passed the two million card mark for the first time. It follows a successful October for the sports and entertainment service that officially recorded sales of more than 1.8 million smart cards in the first nine months of the year. The cards can be topped up or ‘recharged’ similar to a mobile phone and generated revenues of €142.8 million, double the €61 million figure for the first nine months of 2006. 4.4 million recharges were made up to the end of Q3 and had reached 4.9 million by the end of October.
Last month a statement purporting to be from Italy’s anti-trust authority, and supposedly initiating a probe into the Mediaset Premium business was revealed to be the work of a hacker.
