MENA’s Pay TV Revenues To Cross USD 5bn By 2021

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Legitimate pay TV operators in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region are increasingly relying on exclusive content rights to gain subscribers. This is especially true for satellite TV platforms such as beIN and OSN.

Despite various hurdles, the number of pay TV homes across 20 countries in the MENA region will double between 2010 and 2021 to 20.9 million according to a recent report from Research and Markets. The report shows Turkey accounting for 37 percent of the 2021 total.

From the 5.40 million pay TV homes to be added between 2015 and 2021, 1.98 million will come from Turkey, 0.63 million from Uzbekistan and 0.59 million from Egypt. About a fifth TV households legitimately paid for TV signals by end 2015. This proportion will climb to 24.2 percent by 2021. Qatar will record 80 percent pay TV penetration by 2021, with Georgia (69 percent), Israel (68 percent) and the UAE (62 percent) also high. However, pay TV penetration will be below 10 percent of TV households in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia.

Legitimate pay TV revenues will climb by 82 percent between 2010 and 2021 to USD 5.02 billion. However, growth will only be 25 percent between 2015 and 2021. Turkey and Israel are expected to contribute 45 percent of the region’s pay TV revenues in 2021; down from 52 percent in 2015 and 63 percent in 2010.

From the USD 1,028 million pay TV revenues to be added between 2015 and 2021, Turkey will supply USD 206 million, the UAE, USD 141 million and Saudi Arabia USD 194 million. Revenues in Israel will fall slightly over this period due to greater competition and the conversion of subscribers to bundles leading to lower TV revenues per subscriber.

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