• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, September 4, 2019

Globally, gross video-on-demand subscriptions will jump by 439 million, or 86%, between 2018 and 2024, from 508.4 million to 947.5 million, according to the September 2019 forecast from Digital TV Research.

The net subscriber count will rise by 175 million, to 531.5 million, during the same period.

That means that the average SVOD subscriber will be paying for 1.78 SVOD subs by 2024, versus 1.43 in 2018, the report points out.

By 2024, the report forecasts, Netflix will be contributing 203 million subscribers to the global total, or 21%; Amazon Prime Video 125 million (13%); China (where neither Netflix or Prime operates) 289 million (31%); Disney+ (set to launch this November) 75 million, and “others,” 255 million.

China surpassed the United States last year as the gross subscription leader, and the two countries will account for 59% of the global count by 2024, reports the researcher’s principal analyst, Simon Murray. However, that’s down from 63% in 2018, indicating that other countries are growing faster, he adds.

Fifteen countries will account for more than 10 million subscriptions, or 86% of the total, by 2024.

On the revenue front, pay TV revenues — subscription fees and pay-per-view movies and TV episodes across 138 countries — will fall by 14%, to $177 billion, by 2024. That’s the same level as in 2010, despite the number of pay-TV subscribers growing by a projected 380 million between 2010 and 2024.

That’s partly because subscriber growth is mainly in developing countries where average-revenue-per-subscriber is lower than in developed countries, explains Murray. In addition, subscriptions are moving away from stand-alone packages to double- and triple-play bundles, which are less lucrative for the TV industry, he says.

However, global OTT revenues — online TV episode and movie revenues — will reach $159 billion by 2024, which is more than double 2018's $68 billion. These revenues will grow by some $17 billion this year alone.

SVOD, which surpassed ad-supported VOD (AVOD) as the largest OTT revenue source in 2014, will rise by $51 billion to $87 billion between 2018 and 2024.

But despite losing market share to SVOD, "there is still plenty of AVOD growth left," and several high-profile AVOD platforms are poised to launch soon, Murray points out. The researcher projects that AVOD revenues will increase by $34 billion, to $56 billion, between 2018 and 2024.