It may be little surprise to hear that pay-TV companies have customers with higher incomes than average. As the Strategy Analytics ConsumerMetrix survey data shows, this difference is particularly pronounced in Italy, where households which take Sky, the pay TV platform, earn more than €41,000 a year, which is 18% higher than the average.
Another way of looking at the data is to examine household penetration of Sky’s service according to income group. Less than 13% of Italian households earning less than €15,000 a year take Sky, compared to nearly half of those in the €75-100k bracket. This difference – more than 200% – is much greater than in the UK, where we found less than a 100% difference between higher and lower income groups. This would seem to reflect the fact that Sky is a more mature service in the UK than in Italy, and we should expect the Italian profile to move towards the UK one if the service continues to increase its market share.