A. Guttmann
Research Lead covering media
Pay TV in Peru - statistics & facts
The pay TV market in Peru is seeing similar declines as the entire Latin American region and the rest of the world, for that matter. All in all, the penetration rate of pay TV is declining year-on-year. The segment in Peru experienced significant growth throughout the past decade - between 2013 and 2019, pay TV revenue in Peru increased by more than 82 percent. However, since then, partly driven by the COVID-19 outbreak, and partly by the popularity of streaming, the industry's revenue declined by 5.4 percent, amounting to 1.76 billion Peruvian soles. And so, the latest market figures show that the number of pay TV subscriptions in Peru have dropped to the level from 2016.
The pay TV triad
Three international companies concentrated about 84.5percent of the pay TV subscriptions in Peru in the last quarter of 2022. They were: Telefónica, from Spain; DirecTV, run by Buenos Aires-based Grupo Werthein; and Claro, part of the Mexican telecommunications giant América Móvil. However, their market share changes according to the technology users adopted. The overall leader, Telefónica, accounted for an even greater share of cable TV subscriptions – over 63 percent. By contrast, DirecTV alone concentrated close to two-thirds of the satellite TV subscriptions in Peru. Yet cable is more popular and, therefore, a more diverse subsegment. Roughly three out of four pay TV subscribers in Peru are cable TV customers.Room for expansion?
The household penetration rate of pay TV in Peru has slowly trended down since it peaked at almost 25 percent in 2018. In the fourth quarter of 2022, the share stood below 20 percent. The usage rate per person is even lower. Between 2005 and 2022, there were never more than eight pay TV subscriptions per 100 inhabitants in Peru. The low percentages suggest that there might still be new potential customers, despite the recent decline. There is also a high contrast between Lima and the rest of the Peruvian territory. The concentration of people in the capital makes Lima the department with the most pay TV subscriptions in Peru, accounting for around 54 percent of all connections throughout the country. A market expansion would likely follow in the event of a more evenly distributed population of pay TV subscribers.
