African SVOD revenues to sextuple

African SVOD revenues will reach $1,055 million by 2025; sextuple the 2019 total of $183 million

Digital TV Research forecasts 9.72 million SVOD subscriptions by 2025, up from 2.68 million at end-2019. South Africa (3.24 million by 2025) will remain the subscription leader, with Nigeria (2.14 million) in second place.

Source: Digital TV Research

Simon Murray, Principal Analyst at Digital TV Research, said: “Over the last year, there has been a shift from cheap, local platforms towards the multinational players. This means higher revenues as their prices are higher than local players, but it also keeps subscriber numbers low.”

The top six platforms accounted for 86% of the region’s SVOD subscribers by end-2019, with this proportion to climb to 94% by 2025. Netflix will add 3.6 million subscribers to total 5 million by 2025. Disney+ is not expected to start until 2022, but will have 1.37 million paying subscribers by 2025.

Showmax will have 1.41 million paying subscribers by 2025 – with many more receiving it for free as part of their premium satellite TV subscription. Multichoice has a distribution deal with HBO, which is likely to prevent an HBO Max launch in Africa.