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Spanish pay-DTT crawls in first year
Iñaki Ferreras ©RapidTVNews | 11-08-2010
Spanish pay-DTT has celebrated its first anniversary by racking up just 5% of the country’s pay-TV subscribers.
On launch of the pay DTT service in August 2009, a lot of analysts believed that there would be great impetus to the stalling DTT sector. However, after a year only two pay-TV channels—Mediapro's Gol TV and Sony Entertainment Television's AXN—have been launched, attracting 200.000 subscribers. This figure represents 4.6% of Spain's total pay-TV clients.
A year ago the advertising revenues of mainstream Spanish TV channels were in the middle of a severe downturn but the situation has now changed with TV companies seeing huge increases in revenues and experiencing growth in the advertising investments of nearly 20% over the last few months. It is perceived that broadcasters do not see pay-DTT as a compulsory alternative to their businesses.
However there are hopes of a third pay-DTT channel Sogecable's Canal Plus 2, but without the football matches that the mainstream Canal+ offers.
The rest of Spain’s broadcasters have appeared not to enter the pay sector. Grupo Planeta's Antena 3 will soon launch a new channel, Nitro, and Mediaset's Telecinco will launch Boing both on DTT.
