Global revenues from OTT/streaming operations topped $53 billion in 2017 and are expected to reach $69 billion in 2018, an increase of 33% according to researcher Digital TV Research, which predicts that OTT revenues will reach $123 billion by 2023.
The researcher’s Global OTT TV & Video Forecasts report—covering 138 countries—estimates that the top five countries will command 69% of worldwide revenues by 2023, down from 73% in 2017, showing that the rest of the world will experience faster growth than the top five, which includes, in order of market penetration: U.S., China, U.K., Japan and Germany.
OTT revenues will exceed $1 billion in 17 countries in 2023; up from 10 countries in 2017.
“No prizes for guessing that the U.S. will remain the dominant territory by some distance,’ said Simon Murray, principle analyst at Digital TV Research. “However, its share of global revenues will fall from 43% in 2017 to 37% by 2023. We forecast that revenues in the US will more than double between 2017 and 2023—adding nearly $25 billion to reach $48 billion.
The biggest growth will occur in China, where it’s expected that its share of the world’s total of OTT revenues will climb from 16% in 2017 to 20% in 2023, according to Digital TV Research.
Subscription video on demand services (i.e. Netflix, Amazon Prime), became the largest OTT revenue source in 2016 by overtaking ad-supported video on demand (i.e. Pluto TV). SVOD’s share of the total is expected to increase from 47% in 2017 to 53% in 2023, with revenues climbing by nearly $44 billion to $69 billion between 2017 and 2023. AVOD revenues will increase by $27 billion between 2017 and 2023 to a total of $47 billion (36% of total revenues).
