According to the latest data by Dataxis for the year ending 2016, the number of pay-TV subscribers in Africa stood at approximately 18.7 million.
These represent an increase of approximately 2 million subscribers compared to the previous year. Out of the 18.7 million subscribers, 14 million are DTH subscribers and the remaining represent mostly pay DTT with limited cable and IPTV deployments.
Dataxis estimates pay-TV revenue for the year 2016 to stand at $4.4 billion and forecast to reach $ 6 billion by 2021. The key players for the Sub Saharan African region are MultiChoice/Naspers (approx. 56%), Canal+(approx.15%) and StarTimes (approx.9%).
“The satellite operator MultiChoice, owned by Naspers Limited has been the key player in Anglophone Africa pay TV market since its launch. However, the new entrant of the year, Econet Media/Kwesé along with StarTimes and Zuku will change this configuration”, declared Pascal Orhan, chief analyst at Dataxis.
Regarding the digital migration process, the full transition is still far from completed. One of the main issue is distribution of millions of DTT Set-top-boxes to low-income households, with industrial policies associated that are leading to further delays. Dataxis predict that the DTT process should be completed in the Sub Saharan African by 2021.
The Dataxis research team have launched a new product called the TV tracker for Sub Saharan Africa, in which more than 1000 has been analysed. 25% of the channels are generalists, 19% are movies and fictions and 9% represent sports channels.
“Pay-TV operators like Naspers, Canal+ and StarTimes play an important role in the channel edition as 18% of all the channels belong to one of them. They focus mainly on movies and fictions and sports as the two genres account for almost three-quarter of all the channels they edit”, added Pascal Orhan.