“ The challenge, however, is sustainability. For this growth to be long-term, governments and private investors must ensure that the industry develops local talent and fosters a culture of innovation and a viable ecosystem. Incentives and cash rebates are not sufficient if not supported by all-inclusive strategies to develop the overall media production and distribution value chain to become selfsustained and organically growing over the time.” FAILURES. Hasan’ s message is one of production successes and expansion. Robert Lakos, a Dubai-based executive with Eutelsat and with long experience in the pay-TV sector as well as free-to-air( FTA) reception thanks to his relationship with EchoStar, says he is worried about the normalisation of TV failures.
“ The first failure is in traditional linear television which in the MENA region has been delivered by satellite. The basic dysfunctionality is obvious. There are close to one thousand TV channels broadcasting FTA and their main source of revenue comes from advertising. Advertisers want the ability to target their ads to specific consumers. The most obvious targeting should be geographic: to deliver advertising to people living in a specific country, or even in a specific city. But satellite TV delivers the exact same advertisement to consumers across the entire MENA region from Morocco all the way across to Baghdad and south to Yemen,” explains Lakos.
“ For many years, the main impact of this one-size-fits-all geographic coverage was that TV advertising in MENA underperformed compared to other regions. But with the rise of social media platforms advertisers now have the ability to deliver ads with a high degree of geographic targeting. And, not surprisingly, their TV advertising budgets are shifting away from satellite towards social media. This shift poses an existential threat to satellite channels,” he adds. THREAT.“ During the past year, I’ ve seen increasing awareness of this threat and some companies – in particular, Eutelsat which together with Nilesat controls the dominant 7 / 8W MENA orbital slot – are developing solutions to roll out targeted advertising solutions that will work on satellite delivered TV content. Eutelsat will be running some demos at CabSat to show this working on live signals,” he advises.
“ In fact, it is not that difficult to do targeted ads via satellite in a closed ecosystem like that of a pay-TV operator. For example, a few months ago OSN launched targeted advertising in partnership with Synamedia. But as we know closed Pay TV ecosystems where the operator has control over the STB population account for only a very small portion of TV households in MENA.”“ Without disparaging any operator’ s sub counts, no operator controls more than one per cent of the STBs in the roughly 65 million satellite TV households of MENA. So, the real genius of what Eutelsat is showing at CabSat is that their solution is working on the ultra-cheap STBs which deliver TV to the overwhelming majority of households. That kind of mass-market penetration is hugely promising for the future of satellite TV in the region.” OTT.“ The next failure on my mind is OTT. I know I am an outlier in calling OTT a failure in MENA, but the numbers just don’ t add up to anything we would normally label as‘ success’.
We have several local and international operators each claiming between three and four million subs. Market analysts add these sub numbers together and we all read their e-mail blurbs about 15 or 18 million OTT subs with projections to grow into the high twenties within a decade. But they are double and sometimes triple counting these subs.
WBD buys 30 % of OSN for $ 57m
Warner Bros Discovery( WBD) on March 24, 2025 announced it had acquired a 30 % minority stake in Dubai-based satellite TV operator
( OSN) Group for $ 57m. The investment targets OSN +, the company’ s subscription streaming service, which currently carries Max programming and Warner Bros Pictures’ movies following a distribution deal signed in May 2024.
OSN, itself the merger of two competing media businesses, was formed in 2009. Orbit was backed by Mawarid Holdings and Showtime, a joint-venture between US broadcaster CBS and Kuwaiti-based investment company KIPCO.
Since the merger, which resulted in Panther Media Group, they have acquired a music streaming service Anghami( owning 55.45 % and trading as OSN Streaming). Anghami claims 120m registered users and 2.5m paying subscribers.
Here’ s what I mean: I subscribe to Netflix, Amazon Prime( because it comes‘ free’ with the shopping), Apple TV( because I love Ted Lasso) and Etisalat’ s e-vision IPTV service( because I need Internet and the TV hookup comes in the bundle.) Market analysts count me as FOUR subscriptions, but schizophrenia notwithstanding, I represent just a single TV household!”
Lakos says his‘ combo’ of OTT subscriptions is fairly typical for more Western oriented TV households in the region.“ A more Arabic combo of OTT subscriptions joins MBC’ s Shahid VIP service with Amazon Prime( because of the bundle with e-shopping) plus a beIN subscription to watch premium football.”
Lakos asks readers to be“ honest” about total subs to OTT in MENA:“ There are between four and seven million unique TV households subscribing to OTT services, most of them are subscribing to two or three services. No OTT operator is on a growth trajectory to get into the high double-digit millions. In a TV-holic region this cannot qualify as success. A good frame of reference to define success is the growth of satellite TV. Between 1995 and 2005 the number of satellite TV households exploded from fewer than one million to more than thirty million and continued adding three million annually before topping out over 60 million. Look at the rooftops of Cairo or Marrakesh and the evidence is plain as day. That’ s what it looks like in the TV-holic MENA region when consumer demand connects with an attractive and affordable offering.” PIRACY,“ And that brings us to the third failure of TV in MENA which is the absolute dominance of illegal pirate IPTV services across the region,” Lakos says.“ In every country and in every city and every town across this region it is easy and easily affordable to get an unofficial subscription which gives you access via the Internet to literally thousands of TV channels including all premium sports from around the world.”
“ You also get on demand access to pretty much everything: All the most popular Ramadan dramas are available within hours of airing – but of course stripped of the voluminous advertising which financed their production. The latest Hollywood blockbusters appear within a few weeks( with Arabic subtitles). Ditto for Netflix productions, HBO productions. if you can name it, you can watch it. This is the real competition to Shahid VIP, to Netflix, to StarzPlay and the scoreline is a blowout on par with the 2021 matchup of Germany v Lichtenstein( 11 – 0). It’ s not a fair matchup but it is the reality that needs to be acknowledged if ever a pay-TV operator wants to achieve real success in the massmarkets of MENA,” he concludes.
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