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Digital TV Research: Eastern Europe Digital Pay TV Subscribers to Grow

The number of digital pay TV subscribers in Eastern Europe will increase from 25.49 million in 2010 to 61.57 million in 2017 and up to 78.08 million by 2023, according to Digital TV Research, whose report states that digital pay TV subs will climb by 27% between 2017 and 2023. Digital TV Research’s Simon Murray commented:

simon murray“Eastern Europe is slowly ridding itself of the legacy of analogue cable TV. Twenty million households still subscribed to analogue cable at end-2017 – more than digital cable.

Many of these homes receive very basic packages, often as part of their rent. Some of the remaining analogue cable subs do not want to convert to more expensive digital pay TV platforms and will therefore switch to DTT”.

Russia will account for half of the region’s pay TV subscribers in 2023. However, Russia will lose 1.5 million pay TV subscribers between 2017 and 2023. The number of pay TV subs will fall in 10 of the 22 countries covered in the report.

Pay TV revenues in Eastern Europe peaked at $6.53 billion in 2017 and will slowly fall to $6.33 billion by 2023. Analogue cable revenues will drop by $1 billion over this period, so digital pay TV revenues will increase by $769 million to $6.25 billion.