China and India together will account for 80% of the region’s 676m pay-TV subscribers by 2025.
The pay-TV sector in the Asia Pacific region is set to add 45mn subscribers over the next five years, according to a report by Digital TV Research. The region is the “most vibrant in the world”, with revenues also set to grow by $1.4bn by 2025 and pay-TV penetration remaining stable at around 69%, the report said.
The figures stand in stark contrast to Europe and the rest of the world, where a recent report estimated that pay-TV subscribers will continue to decline. A similar report also estimated that US subscribers dropped by 6m in 2019, with that decline set to continue as consumers cut the cord.
The report notes that India will add 24m pay-TV subscribers over the next five years and that China will peak in 2021 with a slow decline thereafter. OTT penetration and competition will remain much higher in China than in India.
Further, Japan will see growth from 17.4m in 2019 to 17.7m by 2025, while South Korea will experience a slight decline from 20.4m in 2019 to 20.2m in 2025. Indonesia meanwhile will jump from 11.2m in 2019 to 18.5m in 2025.
Commenting on the numbers, Simon Murray, Principal Analyst at Digital TV Research, said: “Much of this subscriber growth is down to the number of TV households increasing by 65 million between 2019 and 2025 to 978 million as populations rise and disposable income climbs. The region’s population is 4 billion – more than half of the world’s total.”
