Mexico overtook Brazil last year to become Latin America’s largest pay-TV market even though Brazil has twice as many TV households, according to Digital TV Research. Mexico has benefited from strong adoption of prepaid satellite TV, whereas since November 2014, Brazil has been losing subscribers. Mexico will further increase its position, taking 30% of the region’s pay-TV subscribers by 2022, with Brazil expected to account for 25%.
The research suggests that there will be 83.47 million pay-TV homes in Latin America by 2022, which is an increase of 10.5 million on the 2016 figures of 72.96 million. By comparison, between 2010 and 2016, more than 31 million pay-TV subs were added.
Pay-TV revenues in Latin America are expected to grow by $1.4 billion to $19.87 billion, up 7.7% between 2016 and 2022.
Brazil, with revenues of $6.9 billion in 2022, will remain the top country by pay-TV revenues by some margin, followed by Mexico, with revenues of $3.2 billion, and Argentina with revenues of $2.2 billion. Subscription rates are much higher in Brazilian than in Mexican, which largely due to the popularity of prepaid satellite TV, are lower.
Of the pay-TV operators, America Movil had 14.61 million subscribers at the end of 2016, mostly under its Claro brand, and DirecTV/Sky had 20.49 million, and together accounted for 48% of the region’s subscribers.
