Africa to gain 17 million pay TV subs

Africa will have 47.26 million pay TV subscribers by 2025, up from 30.70 million at end-2019. Nigeria will contribute 10 million subscribers by 2025 – having overtaken South Africa in 2020.

African subscriber numbers will climb by 54% between 2019 and 2025, but pay TV revenues will rise by only 31% – indicating that subscribers will pay less. Pay TV revenues will reach $7.20 billion by 2025, up by $1.72 billion on 2019.

Simon Murray, Principal Analyst at Digital TV Research, said: “Despite the strong subscriber growth, competition is intense. Prices and ARPUs are falling as rivals fight to gain subscribers.”

Source: Digital TV Research

Three groups accounted for 93% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s pay TV subscribers in 2019 – although this proportion will fall to 88% by 2025. Each of the three main groups provides a satellite TV platform and a pay DTT platform.

Multichoice had 14.56 million subs across satellite TV platform DStv and DTT platform GOtv by end-2019. This total will grow to 18.05 million by 2025, with a marked slowdown in satellite TV growth.

France’s Vivendi had 4.73 million subs to its Canal Plus satellite TV platform and Easy TV DTT platforms by end-2019. Its total will climb to 7.35 million by 2025.

StarTimes/StarSat will enjoy the most impressive growth: from 9.10 million subs at end-2019 to 16.39 million by 2025.