Global pay TV revenues hit $184 billion in 2012

The number of pay TV households (analog and digital) reached 772 million by 2012, up from 585 million in 2008, according to a new report from Digital TV Research. Asia Pacific increased by 126 million – or two-thirds of the global additions – during this period to bring its total to 433 million. North America (112 million) was the second largest region, although it only added 4 million.

Top 10 pay TV countries at end-2012

Households (million)  Penetration (%)
--------------------  ----------------
China          232.8  Netherlands  100
India          116.7  Denmark       97
USA            100.2  Belgium       96
Japan           25.1  Hong Kong     96
Russia          23.6  Norway        95
Germany         21.8  South Korea   95
Brazil          16.2  Sweden        92
South Korea     16.1  Switzerland   86
UK              14.4  Canada        86
Mexico          13.0  USA           86

Source: Digital TV Research Ltd

Pay TV revenues reached $184 billion in 2012, up by 28.5% from $143 billion in 2008. Cable (analog and digital combined) generated the highest revenues by platform, with $87 billion in 2012. However, cable revenues are flattening and DTH will overtake cable soon. IPTV revenues reached $12.0 billion in 2012, up from $2.8 billion in 2008. North America generates about half the world’s total pay TV revenues.

About 404 million digital homes were added around the world between 2008 and 2012. This took the digital TV household total for the 97 countries covered in the Digital TV World Databook to 786 million. Digital TV penetration of TV households climbed from 28.6% at end-2008 to 54.7% by end-2012.

However, there were still 652 million analog TV households by end-2012 – although this was down from 956 million at end-2008. There were still 411 million analog terrestrial homes (down by 56 million year-on-year) and 242 million analog cable ones (down by 33 million) at end-2012.

Digital cable was in 273 million homes (up by 43 million on end-2011), followed by 178 million pay digital DTH (up by 20 million) and 118 million free-to-air digital DTH by end-2012. Pay IPTV brought in another 69 million households (up by 18 million). Meanwhile, primary free-to-air DTT homes reached 138 million (up by 26 million), with pay DTT accounting for a further 9 million.

From the digital homes added between 2008 and 2012, 83 million came from primary DTT [homes taking DTT but not subscribing to cable, DTH or IPTV]. Digital cable contributed a further 151 million additions, pay DTH 75 million, with pay IPTV providing an additional 56 million.

The universe is not static as 100 million TV households were added between 2008 and 2012 to bring the total to 1,439 million. Of these additions, 69 million came from the Asia Pacific region.

From the 404 million digital TV households added between 2008 and 2012, 229 million were in the Asia Pacific region, bringing its total to 342 million. China became the largest digital TV household nation in 2010; rising to 187 million digital TV homes (24% of the world’s total) by end-2012.