The launch of YouTube TV marks a major turning point in the industry.
Are we likely to see the launch of a similar service in Europe, or more specifically CEE, at some point in the future?
Firstly, it has to be said that the US has not only the most developed TV market in the world but also one of the most complex. While Google’s service is designed first and foremost to compete with the likes of traditional providers such as Comcast, it will also have to square up to the growing number of those, such as Sling TV, that offer OTT services.
Cord cutting is a serious problem in the US, with pay-TV companies having lost 795,000 subscribers in 2016 alone. However, providers are starting to fight back by either partnering with OTT services or launching their own. As a result, the top six cable companies lost 280,000 TV subscribers in 2016, compared to 1.2 million two years earlier.
YouTube TV, which is initially only available in a few selected parts of the US, is aimed at both cord cutters and ‘cord nevers’, millennials who have yet to pay for a cable service. It offers a ‘skinny bundle’ of over 40 TV channels for $35 a month.
In Europe, on the other hand, cord cutting has never been the same problem as it is in the US. At the same time, OTT is now an established fact of life in every market, with the take-up of Netflix, for instance, being exceptionally high in some West European countries.
Some markets in CEE, such as Poland and Russia, can be considered to be on a par with those in Western Europe. It is not too far fetched to assume that a YouTube TV-type service will at some stage launch there, providing viewers with the sort of choice they do not currently have.
On the other hand, the established players operating in these markets, headed by Liberty Global in the cable industry, are fully aware of the trends across the Atlantic and how best to react to them. It would therefore probably be no surprise if they in due course launch their own ‘YouTube TV’-type services to both retain existing customers and gain new ones.
