The pay-TV market in the Middle East and North Africa has seen record growth in 2016, despite harsh economic conditions.
IHS Markit says the number of pay-TV households topped the five million mark for the first time following growth of 8 per cent year on year. Revenues grew by 15 per cent to $2.27 billion.
“The Middle East and North Africa region is one of the fastest growing regions for pay-TV, in both subscriber numbers and revenues,” said Constantinos Papavassilopoulos, senior analyst at IHS Markit. “The launch of services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime is fueling the market and is a good sign for further growth.”
IHS Markit expects that growth will continue, with pay TV homes reaching seven million in 2021. Revenues will almost double to $4.03 billion in 2021.
The market is dominated by two satellite platforms, beIN Media Group and OSN, which between them control over 60 per cent of subscribers and 55 per cent of revenues for the last seven years.
2016 marks the first full year that beIN Media Group and OSN competed directly against each other.
“Subscription services in the region saw 137 percent growth in 2016, spurred by the launch of Netflix and strong performance from local players,” Papavassilopoulos. Subscription accounted for over 30 percent of the total online video market in 2016, and is expected to contribute 45 percent of total market revenues by 2020.
Advertising remains the most successful business model for monetising online video – representing over 65 percent of total revenue in 2016. “The prevalence of advertising is corroborated by YouTube’s huge appeal in the region,” said Papavassilopoulos. “Countries such as Saudi Arabia are second only to the US in terms of time spent per person watching videos on YouTube.”
IHS Markit expects total online video revenues to grow by more than $1.5 billion by 2020.
