Ziggo’s TV revenues grew by more than 8 percent during the quarter to slightly more than EUR 285 million and KPN saw its TV revenues grow by almost 4 percent. Despite the revenue growth, KPN’s marketshare dropped by 0.4 percentage points to less than 25 percent, while Ziggo’s market share grew to more than 59 percent.
The number of TV connections decreased by 0.2 percent during the third quarter to reach 7.8 million on 30 September. Digital TV is used by 90.3 percent of all connections as the quarterly growth was driven by IPTV via fibre and DSL. This was enough to off-set the decrease of digital cable TV, Digitenne and satellite TV.
Ziggo is the largest provider with regards to connections with more than 51 percent, despite losing customers during the quarter. KPN is number two with almost 30 percent after winning 0.2 percentage points during the quarter. On the digital TV market, KPN is also number two with a market share of 32.6 percent or 2.3 million customers after growing by 0.4 percent during the quarter. Ziggo is also number one on this market with 46.7 percent market share, despite a decrease of 2.500 digital TV connections during the quarter. Ziggo ended September 2016 with 3.289 million digital TV subscribers.
Expectations for coming years
Telecompaper expects the growth of TV revenues to slow down during the coming years, despite the reported quarterly growth. The annual average growth for the coming years up to 2020 is expected to be 0.3 percent to reach around EUR 1.8 billion per year. The revenues are expected to start decreasing from 2018.
At the same time, the TV connections are expected to decrease by around 0.6 percent per year as almost all Dutch households have a TV connection and increasingly fewer households have a second connection for the second or third TV set. They are using other devices like laptops, tablets to watch television and or video instead and become so-called cord cutters and cord-nevers, ending their TV subscription or never becoming a TV subscriber at all. The OTT video and TV market is expected to become more mainstream driven by product enhancements like adding live TV to the OTT service of Dutch broadcasters NLZiet as well as the entry of new providers like Amazon Prime Video and YouFone TV.
