Ziggo leads drop in Dutch TV subscriptions in Q2 2015

HOUTEN, The Netherlands — The Dutch TV market lost 17,000 connections during the second quarter of 2015, to end the quarter with 7.85 million subscribers. The decline was mainly due to Ziggo losing customers. According to Telecompaper’s latest quarterly report on the Dutch Television Market, the cable operators continue to lose market share to IPTV providers over DSL and fibre networks.

Digital TV connections grew by 0.4 percent during the quarter, while analogue-only subscribers fell by 4.4 percent compared to March. Digital TV is now used by more than 88 percent of the market. Cable still accounted for over half (52.9%) of digital TV subscribers in Q2, despite losing market share to the increasingly available IPTV services over DSL and fibre networks. DSL was responsible for 18 percent of the digital TV connections and fibre for almost 12 percent at the end of June 2015.

Ziggo lost digital TV customers for the second quarter in a row, seeing its market share fall to just over 48 percent. KPN added half a percent point of market share in the quarter to take almost 31 percent of digital TV connections. On the total TV market, Ziggo had around 53 percent of connections, after again losing market share to KPN, which grew to almost 28 percent of the market.

“Ziggo is facing a challenge to halt the steady decline in cable’s TV market share”, said Telecompaper analyst and report author Kamiel Albrecht. “We expect an average annual decrease of 0.3 percent in the number of TV subscriptions in the period to 2019. Almost all households already have a TV connection and fewer are taking subscriptions for second TVs, in favour of watching video on tablets, computers and other devices.”

Telecompaper estimates that the TV services market* generated EUR 450 million in revenues in the second quarter of 2015, slightly lower than in the previous quarter. Its ‘Dutch TV Market 2015 Q2’ report also provides a detailed forecast for revenues, subscriptions and provider and technology market shares for the period through 2019.

* The reported retail revenues are based on revenues from mass market consumer and SOHO subscriptions. The total includes revenues from basic TV subscriptions (digital/analogue), pay-TV services and video-on-demand services and excludes revenues from installation fees and set-top box sales.

Due to continuous improvements in our calculations, the numbers in this press release cannot directly be compared with numbers from earlier press releases sent out by Telecompaper on previous studies of the Dutch television market.