According to Digital TV Research, OTT TV episodes and movies will generate revenues of $1.75 billion by 2022 in the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region, more than quadruple the $428 million recorded in 2016.
The research house says subscription VOD's (SVOD's) dominance of the sector will grow, with revenues expected to reach $1.23 billion by 2022 (or 70% of the OTT total), nearly $1 billion more than the 2016 total (56% of OTT revenues).
Digital TV Research forecasts 17.27 million SVOD homes by 2022, up from 3.74 million recorded by end-2016. Turkey is expected to remain the leader by some distance, having established a major local player in 2011.
The top six regional platforms (Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Icflix, Starz Play, Iflix and Shahid Plus) are expected to account for 39% of the region's SVOD subscribers by end-2022, up from 34% in 2016. Extracting Israel and Turkey, these six platforms are expected to account for 78% of SVOD subscribers by 2022, down from 88% in 2016.
Netflix is expected to be the largest pan-regional SVOD platform by 2022, with an expected 3.26 million paying subscribers. This is more than quintuple the 2016 total. Longer-established Icflix is expected to cross 2 million subscribers by 2022, quadruple its 2016 total. Starz Play is expected to add a further 1.60 million. Digital TV Research forecasts of 695,000 subs for Iflix by 2022 only cover six of its eight current countries in the region.
Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV Research, said: "A handful of mobile operators such as Orange, Zain, Ooredoo, Etisalat and Vodafone have assets across several countries. SVOD platforms can gain considerable economies of scale by signing distribution deals with mobile operators. Deals between mobile operators and SVOD platforms are already prevalent in the Middle East and North Africa - offering an example for the rest of the world to follow."