Although OTT services are growing rapidly in Ukraine, piracy remains a major obstacle to the development of the market.
Quoting Gemius Ukraine, Kommersant reports that as of last December megogo.net and oll.tv, two of the three largest OTT players (online cinema), had 4.6 million and 167,500 visitors a month respectively.
Divan.TV, a content provider and also one of the top three OTT players in Ukraine, meanwhile worked with over 20 ISPs.
Furthermore, operators said that in the second half of 2013 the number of bundles of Divan.tv sold quadrupled for Telesystems of Ukraine and rose five and 10 times respectively for Optinet and Freenet.
In general, bundle sales accounted for around 20% of ISP’s total internet sales.
Ivan Shestakov, the director of marketing at megogo.net, said he expects the legal issues, such as the lack of a regulatory framework, to be resolved over the next year.
Fedor Ogarkov, CEO of Media Group Ukraine, the owner of oll.tv, said the penetration rate of OTT in some ISPs may reach 70-80% of the total number of subscribers in the next 3-4 years.
Meanwhile, Andrey Kolodyuk, the founder of Divan.tv, noted that the main feature of the Ukrainian pay-TV market is that it is highly competitive and has extremely low ARPU.
For its part, Divan.tv has an ARPU of $7, compared to $4 in the Ukrainian pay-TV market as a whole.
Kolodyuk also said he expects to see a deal that would see the merger of a Ukrainian and Russian player this year.
