Pandemic shrinks Italian TV market by over €400m
November 24, 2020
From Branislav Pekic in Rome
Due to the ongoing pandemic, the Italian TV market has lost over €400 million in value. TV advertising is down by 13 per cent, while pay-TV is the only positive performer.
These are the main conclusions of the Television Market in Italy 2020-2022 report published by Rome-based ITMedia Consulting.
Also, pay-TV surpasses FTA for the first time in terms of revenues, while the TV market should start growing again as a result of the considerable increase in pay-TV revenues and the partial recovery of the advertising market.
Broadband TV should grow by 33 per cent on average per year, thanks to video streaming, reaching over half of Italian households. A strong contribution will come from the entry of Sky Italia as a network operator and SVoD, which should see a 31.3 per cent CAGR in the reference period.
Although Sky Italia, Mediaset and RAI will remain the dominant players, they will lose market share to other operators whose joint turnover will reach almost €2 billion in revenues. Although Mediaset still collects over half of the advertising investments, it is losing ground and now accounts for less than 20 per cent of overall TV sector revenues.
Sky Italia is still the main market player, albeit with a downward trend, as new and aggressive VoD players increasingly gain market share.
The report highlights that traditional players that rely only on consolidated business models are being penalised, to the benefit of new players that are able to exploit new technological means and changing viewer demand, increasingly moving towards a personalised, multi-platform and multi-screen experience.