The turnover of the pay-TV and video-on-demand (VOD) providers in Germany has exceeded the €2 billion mark in 2013 for the first time.
The combined turnover rose from €1.84 billion in 2012 by 11.4% to €2.05 last year. In the whole German-speaking market the turnover grew to around €2.2 billion. The figures are taken from the study Pay-TV in Deutschland 2014 which the commercial broadcasters’ industry association VPRT presented in Munich today. For 2014, VPRT expects a turnover increase by 10-15% to around €2.3 billion in Germany and €2.5 billion in the German-speaking countries.
88 pay-TV channels can currently be subscribed to in Germany of which 73 offer their service in HD quality. The increased turnover is mainly based on strong customer growth. The number of pay-TV subscriptions has risen by almost 50% in the past five years to 6.4 million at the end of 2013. In the whole German-speaking market, the figure amounts to around 7.1 million subscribers.
The average viewer market share of pay-TV channels across all TV households including non-subscribers amounted to 2.2% in the first five months of 2014. Among pay-TV households, the subscription channels reached an average combined viewer market share of 14.7%.
Around €800 million were invested by the pay-TV broadcasters into their programmes in 2013, estimates VPRT, for example into the purchase of movie and series rights or in original productions which gain increasing importance.
The German-language study can be downloaded free of charge as a PDF file from VPRT’s website.
