Despite the subscriber count increasing by fewer than one million, Eastern European pay TV revenues will increase by 9.9% between 2015 and 2021 to $5.97 billion, according to the sixth edition of the Digital TV Eastern Europe Forecasts report. However, Digital TV Research estimates that pay TV revenues rose by 27% between 2010 and 2015, indicating that much of the fast growth is over.

There will be only 16,000 pay TV subscriber additions between 2016 and 2021 for the 22 countries covered in the report; taking the total to 80.05 million. However, as analog cable subs fall, the number of digital pay TV subscribers will increase from 25.84 million (20.7% of TV households) in 2010 to 54.63 million (42.8%) in 2015 and onto 75.73 million (58.9%) by 2021.

So, nearly all of the revenue growth will come from analog cable TV subs converting to more expensive digital platforms. Digital pay TV revenues will increase by $3 billion between 2010 and 2020 to $5.77 billion. They will increase by 32% (or by $1.4 billion) between 2015 and 2021.

Pay TV will be taken by 62.3% of the region’s TV homes in 2021, up from 48.0% at end-2010, but only up from 62.0% at end-2015. This converts to 20 million more pay TV subscribers between 2010 and 2021, but fewer than a million between 2015 and 2021.