OTT is eating away at the legacy-based disc market, with digital crossover expected to take place in 2017.
However, according to Tony Gunnarsson, senior analyst, TV Practice, Ovum, it will happen quicker outside the US and has already done so in several markets including the Nordics (2014).
It will also happen in several others this year, including Benelux, Russia, China ad South Korea.
Commenting on OTT v pay-TV, Gunnarsson said that in the US, the most mature OTT market, the latter’s revenues correspond to only 10% of the pay-TV market and will grow to 15% by 2018. Meanwhile, internationally OTT generates an even smaller percentage of pay-TV markets’ revenues.
The UK is the most developed SVOD market in Europe with around 7 million subscribers, while France and Germany each have only around 2 million.
OTT is even further behind the curve in CEE. There, the split between OTT digital video revenues – SVOD at 71%, EST at 16% and TVOD at 13% in 2019 – is likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future, with SVOD having evolved into a TV platform in its own right.
Gunnarsson noted that several US pay-TV providers have launched stand-alone linear and on demand SVOD services.
