Pay TV revenues in Eastern Europe will peak at $6.95 billion in 2019 - before slowly falling to $6.59 billion by 2024. Analog cable revenues will drop by $844 million over this period, so digital pay TV revenues will increase by $502 million to $6.56 billion, Digital TV Research reports.

Simon Murray, Principal Analyst at Digital TV Research, said: “Tough times continue in Eastern Europe, with poor job prospects forcing many to seek work abroad. This migration married with low birth rates mean that the number of TV households will fall in 18 countries between 2018 and 2024 – with the region’s TV households dropping by 2.5 million.”

Murray continued: “The number of pay TV subscribers in Eastern Europe will decline from 82.33 million at end-2018 to 78.64 million in 2024. Not great news but better than the US situation.”

Eastern Europe is slowly ridding itself of the legacy of analog cable TV. There were still 17.67 million analog cable subscribers by end-2018. This total will fall to 568,000 by 2024. The number of digital pay TV subscribers will increase by 13 million between 2018 and 2024 to 78 million – or up by 21%.

Russia will account for half of the region’s pay TV subscribers in 2024. However, Russia will lose 2.88 million pay TV subscribers between 2018 and 2024. The number of pay TV subs will fall in 10 countries between 2018 and 2024.

Meanwhile, the number of households in Ukraine receiving HD satellite channels has doubled in the past two years, according to the analysis for 2018 conducted by SES Satellite Monitor. In the near future, the number is expected to grow even more. Media groups are preparing to launch their own HD channels. About 1.3 million Ukrainian homes in 2018 received high definition channels. At the end of 2016 there were only 0.7 million. At the same time, 3.15 million households still received a TV signal in the traditional SD quality, while in 2016 they were 3.42 million. Currently, about 5.7 million households watch TV in analog format. Digital television signal is available to 7.8 million subscribers.