Global Pay TV revenues Hit $184 billion in 2012

London, UK, July 2, 2013--The number of pay TV households (analog and digital) reached 772 million by  2012, up from 585 million in 2008, according to a new report from Digital TV Research. Asia Pacific increased by 126 million – or two-thirds of the global  additions - during this period to bring its total to 433 million. North America (112 million) was the second largest region, although it only added 4 million.

Pay TV revenues reached $184 billion in 2012, up by 28.5% from $143 billion in 2008. Cable (analog and digital combined) generated the highest revenues by platform, with $87 billion in 2012. However, cable revenues are flattening and DTH will overtake cable soon. IPTV revenues reached $12.0 billion in 2012, up from $2.8 billion in 2008. North America generates about half the world’s total pay TV revenues.

About 404 million digital homes were added around the world between 2008 and 2012. This took the digital TV household total for the 97 countries covered in the Digital TV World Databook to 786 million. Digital TV penetration of TV households climbed from 28.6% at end-2008 to 54.7% by end-2012.

However, there were still 652 million analog TV households by end-2012 -although this was down from 956 million at end-2008. There were still 411 million analog terrestrial homes (down by 56 million year-on-year) and 242 million analog cable ones (down by 33 million) at end-2012.