The pay-TV market in Western Europe is generally considered to be mature, but the increasing deployment of IPTV services will see the market enjoy a modest rate of growth in the number of households subscribing to pay-TV services, according to the latest research published by Analysys Mason, the premier advisors on telecoms, IT and media.

According to the Analysys Mason report, Pay TV in Western Europe: market sizings and forecasts 2005–2013, the number of households subscribing to pay-TV services will increase at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 3.2% from 90.6 million in 2007 to 109.2 million by the end of 2013.

“The adoption of IPTV services will be driven by a combination of factors, including the proliferation of multi-play strategies; latent broadband growth; improving brand recognition, broadening content offerings, and the general move towards digital TV services as the analogue TV signal is switched off in Western Europe,” explains the report’s author Richard Hadley. “However, the growing popularity of IPTV among households will contribute to a slow down in pay-TV spend as these predominantly lower-value TV packages are increasingly bundled with telecoms services.”

Key findings from the new report include:

• Spend on pay-TV subscriptions, including expenditure on PPV/VoD services, will grow at a CAGR of 4.5% from EUR21.5 billion in 2007 to EUR28.0 billion by 2013
• CATV (Cable TV) will continue to be the most popular pay-TV platform, accounting for 48% of Western European pay-TV households at 2013. However, this figure represents a notable decline in market share, down from 58% at the end of 2007
• DTH will make up 29% of Western European pay-TV subscriptions in 2013, but will account for 54% of pay-TV spend, compared with 28% and 52%, respectively, in 2007
• IPTV will increase its share of the Western European pay-TV households from 6% to 15% between 2007 and 2013. However, it will account for only 8% of pay-TV spend in Western Europe in 2013.

The report provides a detailed breakdown of pay-TV households and spend by service platform and subscription type in Western Europe as a whole, and for France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Nordic region, Spain and the UK, individually.