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MARKET FOCUS
the leaders in the country’s IPTV market
are Rostelecom, Beeline and MTS.
As the growth in cable TV user base
begins to decelerate, J’son & Partners
has noted that this segment is embarking
on a transformational drive to upgrade
its networks and adopt DVB-C
technology, which allows providers to
supplement their digital TV service
offerings with access to such services as
VoD and catch-up-TV.
TRENDS. Among the key pay-TV
market highlights and trends from J’son
& Partners’ 2012-2017 Pay-TV Market
Current Status and Forecasts:
l An 11% growth in pay-TV
subscriber base in 2012 compared
with 2011. J’son & Partners
Consulting expects the growth in payTV subscriber numbers to slow and
settle at 2.5% by 2017.
l 2012 pay-TV penetration rate
reached 58%. It’s expected to reach
74% by 2017.
l IPTV is spearheading the industry
growth
with a
62% rise
by 2012.
The
lowest
growth
rate of
just 2% is observed in the cable TV
segment.
Insider’s view
Mark Berenstein, sales
director for Eastern Europe
and CIS, RRsat, shares his
observations on the market.
l The market continued to
grow during 2013 and it
seems it will continue
growing throughout 2014
as well. There are two main
reasons for this growth:
1. We noticed that there
was a lot of interest
during 2013 from foreign
broadcasters to distribute
their channels to CIS and
Russia. A good example of
this was the RRsat
platform, launched in April
2013 on the new Yamal300k satellite, which was
populated with many
foreign channels from
Europe and the US that
14 RUSSIA Briefing
Industry trends in 2013-2017:
Operators with a subscriber base of over 1m
Operator
Tricolor TV
Rostelecom
MTS
ER-Telecom
Orion-Express
Akado
1H 2013
9.5m
6.9m
2.884m
2.469m
1.360m
1.111m
1H 2012
7.95m
6.188m
2.937m
2.006m
0.75m
1.099m
Growth
19%
12%
-2%
23%
81%
1%
Source: iKS-Consulting
Market share, by technology
Technology
1H 2012
1H 2013 Growth
Cable TV
Satellite TV
IPTV
54%
37%
9%
58%
34%
7%
4%
23%
44%
Source: iKS-Consulting
l The satellite TV segment grew 20% in
2012, with Tricolor TV being responsible
for the majority of newly added
subscribers.
wanted to reach the
Russian market. A few
examples are National
Geographic Wild,
FashionOne, 3ABN and
others.
2. During 2014 RSCC and
Gazprom (Russian satellite
operators) are planning to
launch around seven new
satellites with coverage of
Russia and CIS. This
shows the increasing
interest from foreign
content owners in this
region as well as the
objectives of local
broadcasters to increase
distribution outside of CIS.
l Digital pay-TV market will grow in
the context of all available
technologies.
l Capacity range of operators’
channels will be provided by HDpackages and digital TV channels.
l High demand for online video will
cause increased competition from nonlinear TV due to higher penetration of
broadband services.
l The rate of growth of cable TV
market will tend to decrease in all
Russian regions.
MILLIONAIRES. According to iKSConsulting, the number of pay-TV
subscribers in Russia at the end of
June 2013 was 32.5 million, up 13%
compared with the same point in 2012.
The number of operators with a
subscriber base of over 1 million
increased during that time from five to
seven, with the top seven representing
78% of the market. The two new ‘millionaire’
operators were satellite TV provider Orion
Express, with
the fastest
growing
service (up
81% year-onyear), and
Vimpelcom,
whose IPTV
service gained 22% more subscribers over the
year.
It shows the potential in
the market and for growth
during 2014.
l In terms of the main
services being utilised in this
market, as CIS is still a unique
and a closed market and most
of the population only speak
the Russian language, there
is a strong demand for
dubbing services The local
playout services in Russia
are quite expensive, so
many Russian channels are
looking for external playout
services. State-of-the-art
playout centres are also hard
to find in Russia, which is
another reason that we see a
trend for playout services
from outside of Russia We see
an ongoing trend of Russian
and CIS content owners to
expend their distribution
globally, and we can proudly
say that 50%