With over six in ten people paying for TV, Argentina has achieved the highest pay-TV penetration rate in Latin America.
According to Dataxis, Argentina reached 8.47 million households at the end of 2015, up 0.7% on the year before. Pay-TV is a popular premium service in the country, with 63% homes subscribing. Other leading pay-TV markets in LATAM, such as Mexico and Brazil, still have less than 50% penetration.
The market has been driven by well-established cable TV operators, such as Cablevision. The Clarin group-owned company owns four in ten subscriptions across the country, followed by AT&T’s DirecTV with 27% and Telecentro (7%).
Cable TV subscribers account for 71% of the total, only 23.1% of whom have digital connections. Direct-to-home (DTH) services represent 27.7% of total subscriptions, while IPTV is currently only offered on a very local scale.
In this context, regulators are looking to open the market and increase competition as a way to drive telecom convergence. Big telcos like Telecom Argentina and Telefónica are looking for an opportunity to get the green light to enter the pay-TV market.
Dataxis also predicts that: “Argentina will enter a readjustment stage after the changes in the regulations of the sector and the recent integration of Cablevision-Nextel and Telecom-Fintech.”