Revenue growth on the Dutch market for TV and video services has accelerated in the past year, driven by new streaming services and demand for home entertainment, the latest research from Telecompaper shows. While the traditional pay-TV market is flat, revenues from over-the-top video services grew 48 percent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2020.
The total TV-video market was worth EUR 620 million in the third quarter of 2020, up 7.9 percent from a year earlier, according to the latest edition of Telecompaper’s quarterly Dutch TV-Video Market report. The annual growth has roughly doubled from rates of 3-4 percent in 2019, driven by the arrival of new services such as Disney+ and Amazon Prime in the past year, as well as consumer demand for movies and series during the coronavirus pandemic.
Revenues from the traditional pay-TV market were down 0.2 percent in Q3, the first drop since Telecompaper started the report in 2018. The TV services are suffering from a slow erosion in their customer base, as well as fewer customers taking extra channel packages. This is offset by annual price increases and operators’ own SVOD services, mainly Ziggo’s Movie&Series subscription. While the pay-TV segment still accounts for 77 percent of market revenues, this is down from over 83 percent a year ago.
TVOD revenues nearly double
In the same period, OTT services have grown to more than 23 percent of market revenues. SVOD services like Netflix and Videoland account for the bulk of this, with over 80 percent of the segment revenues. However, it is the smaller TVOD segment that is growing fastest, with revenues nearly doubling year-on-year to over EUR 28 million in Q3. Consumers seem to be getting more comfortable with one-off film purchases, likely driven by cinema closures and fewer new movie releases during the pandemic.
"While the pandemic has clearly given a boost to demand for streaming services, growth in the OTT market was very high already at the start of this year," said Tim Poulus, Telecompaper research analyst and co-author of the TV-Video Market report. "With more new services expected to hit the market next year, such as HBO Max and Paramount+, we don’t see 2020 as a one-off, and the growth should continue at a high level."
Netflix lead erodes as Pathe Thuis, Disney+ grow quickly
Several new players managed to build a strong position already in the past year. While Netflix has grown its share of the overall TV-video market to 13 percent of revenues, making it the third-biggest player after Ziggo and KPN, its lead on the OTT segment eroded to 56.5 percent of revenues in Q3 2020 from 66 percent a year ago. Local rival Videloand shows a similar picture, with its OTT revenue share down 1.4 percent points in the past year despite continued revenue growth. The main winners have been the TVOD service Pathe Thuis, which offered one free film each day during the lockdown, and Disney+, which has grown to nearly 6 percent of OTT revenues in barely a year on the market.
