A. Guttmann
Research Lead covering media
Pay TV in Brazil - statistics & facts
The pay TV signal in Brazil shows serious signs of weakening. Despite the fact that the country ranks among the largest pay TV markets in Latin America, only second to Mexico, this segment is at risk. Following a decade marked by the rise of video streaming worldwide, pay TV has shrunk, and while the key players are tirelessly working on holding off the decline, it remains inevitable. According to earlier forecasts, between 2019 and 2022, pay TV revenue in Brazil will have fallen nine percent to 3.15 billion U.S. dollars. Current data shows that this model is quite accurate, seeing that the pay TV segment in Brazil saw revenue amount to approximately 3.2 billion U.S. dollars (16 billion reals) in 2022 and it continued to decrease to 15 billion reals (2.6 billion dollars) a year later.
The future of pay TV in Brazil is quite bleak. Unless something drastic happens to video streaming, cable and satellite providers will struggle to retain customers, which means they have to start looking for alternative revenue streams already today.
Reinvention in times of TV everywhere
Despite the segment's resilience, online video seems to be its ultimate challenger. Ignoring computers and mobile devices and considering only televisions, in mid-2020, video streaming and pay TV in Brazil had an audience share of approximately 14 percent each. About three years later, more than 21 percent of TV sets in use in the South American country showed content streamed from platforms such as YouTube, Netflix, and Disney+, while pay TV's share dropped to below nine percent. The business model, perhaps unsurprisingly, meets Brazilian viewers' pressing demand for audiovisual content on all their devices. However, video streaming also faces limitations. More than one-fourth of consumers surveyed in Brazil in 2022 said affording all platforms they wanted was too expensive. In 2023, a similar share of Brazilians said that they had a cable TV subscription, so they saw no reason to join a video streaming service. Still, telcos and TV companies recognize the need to extend their playing field. Brazil's largest pay TV content provider – Grupo Globo – also runs the country's leading domestic subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) platform, Globoplay.Pay TV's user base keeps declining
The financial segment is seeing losses, and the number of pay TV subscriptions in the country is also declining. In the last four years pay TV providers were reported to have lost more than seven million clients. What is more, as of the end of 2023, the pay TV household penetration rate in Brazil stands below six percent – a figure lower than that recorded during the coronavirus outbreak in 2020. Regional data shows that despite the fact that one specific part of the country might have been home to most of the potential new customers, that is no longer the case. The number of pay TV subscriptions in al of Brazil's regions has declined in the past two years, showing equal drop in popularity across the entire country.The future of pay TV in Brazil is quite bleak. Unless something drastic happens to video streaming, cable and satellite providers will struggle to retain customers, which means they have to start looking for alternative revenue streams already today.
