Pay TV subscriptions in Portugal up 1.9% YoY in 2Q 2024

Anacom: Around 89% of pay-TV subscribers are residential

At the end of the 2nd quarter of 2024 (2Q2024), there were 4.6 million subscribers to the pay-TV signal distribution service (PTV), 86 thousand more than in the same quarter last year. The growth rate in the number of subscribers to this service slowed down, with the lowest annual growth (+1.9%) since the end of 2013.

In the residential segment, PTV penetration reached 96 per 100 households.

The vast majority of PTV subscribers have subscribed to this service as part of a bundle. In 2Q2024, only 1.9% of PTV accesses were sold on a single-play basis.

At the end of 2Q2024, fibre optic (FTTH/B) accounted for 65.2% of total subscribers, followed by cable TV (26.3%), satellite TV – DTH (6.8%) and ADSL (1.7%).

FTTH was also solely responsible for the growth in the number of PTV subscribers, with this technology reaching 3 million subscribers this quarter, 179 thousand more than in the same quarter last year (+6.3%). This growth was not only due to new customers, but also to the migration of customers previously served by other networks to FTTH/B. However, this was the lowest annual growth since the introduction of this technology (in 2007).

At the end of 2Q2024, there were 4.1 million residential subscribers to the PTV distribution service, 65 thousand (+1.6%) more than in the same quarter last year and representing 88.6% of all subscribers.

In the non-residential segment, there were 527 thousand subscribers, representing 11.4% of the total number of subscribers, an increase by 4.1% year-on-year.

At the end of 2Q2024, MEO was the provider with the highest share of subscribers to the PTV distribution service (41.8%), followed by Grupo NOS (36.2%), Vodafone (19.3%) and NOWO (2.7%). MEO and Vodafone were the providers that attracted the most subscribers in net terms compared to the same quarter last year, with their shares increasing by 0.4 p.p and 0.3 p.p., respectively. On the other hand, the shares of Grupo NOS (-0.5%) and NOWO (-0.2%) fell.

In the residential segment, MEO and Grupo NOS had the highest shares (40.1% and 37.4% respectively), while in the non-residential segment MEO had more than half of the subscribers (54.7%).