According to Digital TV Research, three direct broadcast satellite (DBS) groups will continue to account for 90% of Sub-Saharan Africa's pay TV subscribers: Multichoice, Vivendi and StarTimes/StarSat.
Multichoice had 11.61 million subscribers across satellite TV platform DStv and digital terrestrial TV (DTT) platform GOtv by end-2016, which is expected to grow to 17.66 million by 2022. Vivendi had 2.32 million subscribers to its Canal Plus satellite TV platform and Easy TV by end-2016; that number is expected to climb by 2 million to 4.32 million by 2022.
StarTimes/StarSat is expected to have the largest percentage growth: from 4.18 million subscribers at end-2016 to 10.61 million by 2022, only 1 million behind Multichoice. Much of the growth is expected to come from satellite TV subscribers in new countries.
From the 19.47 million pay TV subscribers across 35 countries surveyed at end-2016, 12.14 million were satellite TV and 6.76 million pay DTT. The pay TV total is expected to nearly double to 36.72 million by 2022, with satellite TV contributing 18.36 million and pay DTT 15.84 million.
South Africa supplied 6.39 million of the 2016 total pay TV subscribers, which is expected to grow to 9.14 million by 2022. Nigeria is expected to increase by 4 million from 4.46 million in 2016 to 8.45 million in 2022.
Sub-Saharan pay TV revenues are expected to reach $6.59 billion in 2022, up from $4.20 billion in 2016 and $1.65 billion in 2010. South Africa and Nigeria are expected to contribute nearly half of the region's pay TV revenues by 2022.
Satellite TV accounted for 87% of the 2016 pay TV revenues, but that proportion is expected to fall to 78% by 2022. By contrast, pay DTT is expected to climb from 11% of the total in 2016 to 18% by 2022, from $467 million to $1.156 billion.