According to digital TV Research, western Europe will avoid the curse of cord-cutting for at least the next five years. The research house says the western European pay TV market is mature, but, unlike North America, it will still gain subscribers between 2016 and 2022. Although this only represents a 6.7% increase, it means nearly 7 million more subs to take the total to 106 million. Western Europe is expected to cross the 100 million pay TV subs mark in June this year.
Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV Research, said: "Better news is that the number of digital pay TV subscribers will increase by 15.6% (14 million) over the same period. Analog cable subs will fall from 8.0 million in 2016 to 0.5 million in 2022."
Much of the subscriber growth is expected to come from countries with traditionally low pay TV penetration: Two-thirds of the region's next additions are expected to come from Italy (up by 1.47 million or 20% between 2016 and 2022), Spain (up by 1.36 million or 23%) and France (up 1.41 million or 11%). However, subscriber growth is expected to be lower than 3% for eight of the 18 countries in the region that the research house tracks.
