Global pay TV market 2015, by provider

The graph shows the distribution of pay TV market worldwide during the second quarter of 2015, by provider. Comcast held 18 percent of the global market in that quarter.

Pay TV market share worldwide– additional information

Despite the rise of cord-cutting and streaming services worldwide, the number of pay TV subscribers in the world is forecast to grow from 907 million in 2015 to just over one billion by 2021. In line with this growth in number of subscribers, the global pay TV revenue is projected to increase from 257 billion U.S. dollars in 2014 to 307.5 billion U.S. dollars by 2020. North America, led by the U.S., is the most profitable pay TV market as of 2015. The region is forecast to maintain its global leadership despite an expected small decline in revenue between 2015 and 2021. Revenue of the pay TV is forecast to grow in emerging markets such as Asia Pacific and Latin America in the same time frame. The revenue of pay TV in Asia Pacific, for example, is projected to increase from about 24 billion U.S. dollars in 2010 to 40 billion U.S. dollars by 2021.

As of the second quarter of 2015, two American providers were leaders in the global pay TV market. The Philadelphia-based Comcast and the California-based DirecTV, recently acquired by telecom giant AT&T, each held 18 percent of the share. Liberty Global, which has media billionaire and executive John Malone as chairman, and News Corp and 21st Century Fox, media conglomeration owned by Rupert Murdoch and his family, are also leading pay TV providers worldwide. In the U.S., Comcast is still the main pay TV provider, with 22.35 million pay TV subscribers as of the last quarter of 2015, and an estimate of 22 percent of the market share during the same year.