Europe’s private TV firms grow

Private TV groups in Europe have achieved overall growth despite the recession, a report by the European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO) has found.

The study suggests that Europeans remain faithful to pay TV services despite the economic slowdown, with premium channels and VoD and/or catch-up TV services helping to boost growth.

The 20 leading private TV companies in Europe achieved overall growth in 2012, the report said, increasing by 2.1% and “bucking the trend” following the EU’s GDP shrinking by 0.3% last year.

The study compared 12 groups mainly operating as pay TV broadcasters and eight groups mainly financed by advertising.

It also found that the former have performed better than the latter, with an overall organic growth rate of 3.9% for pay TV groups, while the overall revenue of groups mainly financed by ads decreased by 0.9%.

“Even in a period of recession, European households have not only generally maintained their subscriptions, but have also demonstrated interest for new services,” said the report.

The pay TV groups in the study include Sky in UK, Germany and Italy; Vivendi in France and Poland; Prisa in Spain; Zon Multimedia in Portugal; and Cyfrowy Polsat in Poland.

Last year was a busy one for Euro pay TV. Liberty Global consolidated the German company Unity Media Kabel BW, as well as increasing its share in the Belgian company Telenet and has announced its take-over of Virgin Media in the UK and Ziggo in the Netherlands.

The satellite pay TV market has also been strengthened in Poland with the recent launch of the NC+ platform, as a result of the agreement between Canal+ Cyfrowy, TVN and ITI. In Poland, 2012 was also the first year of complete consolidation by Cyfrowy Polsat of the Telewizja Polsat Group. Furthermore, Telewizja Polsat is currently in the process of taking over the Polskie Media Group.

In the ad-funded sector, TV groups posted contrasting results for 2012, the EAO said. RTL Group and ProSiebensat.1 Media saw significant growth (4% and 7.7% respectively), mainly due to diversification. Similar growth occurred at ITV in the UK.

However, revenues at France’s TF1 Group were flat for a second consecutive year and the EAO noted a “severe decrease of the TV advertising market” in Italy, Spain and Eastern Europe affected the revenues of Mediaset (down 12.5%), Antena 3 (down 7.9%), CME (down 10.7%) and TVN (down 7.8%).