One in five (20%) of Polish pay-TV customers have considered cancelling their subscription in the last year.
However, according to Wavemaker’s Projekt Cyfrowizja VI, this is the lowest figure in the history of the study, with close to 30% wishing to do so seven years ago. This may in part be due to the pandemic, which resulted in the use of more home entertainment, including TV. The highest number of customers threatening to cord cut pay PLN71-100 (€15.5-21.8) a month for their pay-TV service, with the least threatened services costing up to PLN50 a month.
Price is not the only factor at play as there are alternatives such as VOD and a growing DTT offer.
Significantly, 16% of respondents cited the availability of services such as Netflix or HBO Go as a reason for them continuing to remain pay-TV subscribers. Furthermore, up to one in three who cut the cord and moved to terrestrial TV cited the availability of services such as Netflix, HBO Go, Amazon Prime and Player as their reason to stop their pay-TV subscription. At the same time, the percentage of DTT viewers who moved to pay-TV in the past year was also around 20%.
According to Pawel Gala, CEO of Wavemaker, “The pandemic is mainly talked about in the context of accelerating trends in the media market. And while in the Polish VOD segment it really brought a jump in interest in the subscription offer, in the case of pay-TV it paradoxically slowed down the cord-cutting trend, which was to be a consequence of the expansion of subscription video. This is related to both the growing importance of home entertainment and a strong tendency towards partnerships between pay-TV operators and owners of VOD services, which can be seen, for example, in the strategy of Viaplay, which is entering the Polish market. Especially for older customers of operators, the convenience of purchasing several accesses within one package is what counts”.
