What does the future hold in store for pay-TV services in Russia?
Statistics on the market and how it is evolving are published on a regular basis, with the latest, produced by IAA TelecomDaily, pointing to there being 31.7 million subscribers at the end of Q1. This translated into a penetration rate of 59%, up from 50% a year earlier.
Furthermore, the eight largest operators – Tricolor TV, Rostelecom, MTS, ER Telecom, Orion Express, Akado, Beeline and NTV Plus – accounted for 80% of the market, with the only real change on three months earlier being Orion Express changing places with Akado.
This was down to Orion Express gaining an impressive 150,000 subscribers in the first quarter, though the biggest winners over the same period were Tricolor TV (+300,000) and Rostelecom (+200,000).
On the other hand, NTV-Plus, the longest established DTH platform in Russia – and indeed the CEE region – saw its subscriber figure little changed on a year earlier.
Although Orion Express is expected to continue growing strongly this year in terms of subscriber numbers – it currently operates three DTH services, named Continent TV, Telekarta and Orient Express – it will probably be outstripped by Tricolor TV and indeed Rostelecom.
Alongside this growth in take-up of pay-TV services we are seeing more companies, among them MTS and the cable operator ER Telecom, transition to digital.
The pay-TV market in Russia, as indeed several others in the CEE region, though perhaps most noticeably Poland, is now close to saturation. One forecast, by J’son & Partners, predicts the penetration rate will rise to nearly three in four homes (74%) by 2017.
As a result, operators will increasingly have to turn their attention to providing subscribers with additional and more sophisticated services.
Tricolor TV has already moved in this direction by introducing HD channels, and the take-up – one million subscribers this January, predicted to rise to 3.5 million by the end of the year – has been impressive.
On the other hand, Russia will almost certainly continue to be a price-sensitive market irrespective of how many pay-TV operators it has the services they are offering.
