MENA SVoD revenues ‘to triple by 2025’

Revenue from SVoD services in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region will triple between 2019 and 2025, according to a new report from Digital TV Research.

Simon Murray

The report, titled Middle East and North Africa OTT TV and Video Forecasts, predicts SVoD revenue in MENA will reach US$2.97bn by 2025, which is US$2.1bn more than the 2019 total.

Netflix is forecast to account for 38% of the 2025 total as its subscriber base doubles from 2019, followed by StarzPlay Arabia on 23% and Disney+ on 11%. The latter figure is predicted despite the fact Disney+ will not even be available in a MENA country until 2022.

Those three platforms will generate three-quarters of the MENA total by 2025, according to the report. Other SVoD services in the region include Icflix, Shahid, Amazon, Istikana, Wavo and BeIN Connect.

Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV Research, said: “We forecast 29.63 million SVoD subscriptions by 2025, up from 12.25 million recorded at end-2019. Collectively, the 13 Arabic-speaking countries will overtake Turkey’s subscriber count in 2025.”