Rethink TV

Global Forecast on Virtualized Broadband

A boom in virtualization of fixed broadband access infrastructure is developing and will sweep through almost all connections over the next decade, passing the 500 million mark in 2025. That will be 40% of the total 1.26 billion global broadband subscriber base by then, compared with just 0.48% at the end of 2018 and 2.58% now at the start of 2020. These findings have just been reported by Rethink TV, the research arm of Rethink Technologies Research, in its latest report, Broadband Virtualization Accelerates to 500 million connections By 2025.

Except for Africa, virtualization will proceed at a similar pace in all regions with relatively little difference between the telco and rather smaller cable broadband sectors. This reflects virtualization being universally recognized as essential to contain costs and boost efficiencies in a cutthroat broadband market that has become the lifeblood for both cable cos and telcos.

While Comcast on the cable side and telco Deutsche Telekom will be among the strongest early adopters, many operators in developing countries across Asia Pacific and Latin America will be not far behind as they deploy virtualized equipment, expanding footprint and as part of the replacement cycle. Some developing countries will be among the leaders, with Indonesia on course to virtualize 63% of its connections by 2025.
This report is critical to anyone involved in planning a broadband network which many include pay TV operators, telcos or their equipment and software suppliers and investors, at C Suite level down to strategic marketing and planning.

Companies mentioned in this report:

Adtran, America Movil , AT&T, Bezeq, Brocade, BSNL, BT, CableLabs, Calix, CenturyLink, Charter, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Cisco, Claro, Comcast, CommScope, Cox Communications, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Groupo Clarin, Grupo Televisa, Harmonic, Huawei, Jio Fiber Broadband, Juniper Networks, KDDI, Korea Telecom,  LG Uplus, Liberty Global, Megacable, Net Servicos, Nokia, NTT Docomo, Oi, Orange France, SFR, SK Broadband, Sky UK, Softbank, Telecom Italia, Telecom Egypt, Telefonica, Televisa, Telmex, Turk Telecom, Verizon, Virgin Media, VMWare, Vodafone Kabel Deutschland, ZTE

Addressable Advertising Forecast to 2025

Addressable TV advertising will leap from $26.5 billion in total worldwide revenue in 2019 to almost six times that value at $85.5 billion by 2025. This reflects advertising dollars switching to addressable as the platforms mature and are better understood by the advertising community.
This is the principal finding of the latest Rethink TV report, Addressable Advertising Forecast to 2025 Addressable advertising boom across all regions and platforms.

Aggregation of inventory will be a key driver by increasing the size of addressable targets, making them viable for larger brands and overcoming fragmentation within the ecosystem. The main boost for broadcasters and Pay TV operators is that these adverts fetch higher CPMs (Cost Per 1000 impressions) than general spots broadcast to all viewers of a program.

The boom in addressable TV advertising coincides with a decline in traditional pay TV viewing in some of the leading markets, including the USA. This is reflected in addressable accounting for an increasing proportion of total TV advertising revenue over the next 6 years. In terms of impressions, addressable accounted for just 2.4% of total TV advertising in 2019, rising by about 3.5-fold to 8.5% by 2025. But because addressable ads cost more their revenue contribution is greater, reaching 32.8% or virtually one third by 2025.

The report breaks down the analysis of addressable and online TV advertising by the main geographical regions, identifying key drivers and constraints in each case.

Companies mentioned in this report:

ABC, Alibaba, Amazon, AMC Networks, Apple, AT&T, Baidu, Barclays Bank, British Airways, CBS, Changhong, Channel 4, Clypd, Comcast, Comscore, Discovery, Disney, ESPN, Facebook, Freeform, Free Sheel, Hearst Television,  Hisense, Hotstar, Liberty Global, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Nielsen, Roku, Sky, Skyworth, SportX, Star India, Tencent, Turner, Virgin Media, Vizio, WarnerMedia, Xandr, Xiaomi, Youtube

Sports Rights Forecast to 2025

The rise of streaming is bringing major sporting events to a global audience and pushing up media rights revenues. This will drive media sport rights revenues up 75% over the 7 year period from 2018 till 2025 from $48.6 billion to $85.1 billion.

Association football will increase its already dominant share of that pie from 25.1% ($12.8 billion) in 2018 to 37.4% ($31.9 billion), primarily through increased viewership of Europe’s top leagues in other regions, especially Asia Pacific, including China, and North America. Other sports will also benefit from the fan base expansion generated by globalization and greater streaming distribution, notably basketball.

These are among the primary conclusions of the latest report from Rethink TV, the video forecasting arm of Rethink Technology Research, called Globalization lifts TV sports rights past $85 billion future. Sports Rights Forecast to 2025. A strong subtext of the report is that direct to consumer services are creeping up on the sports rights industry, stealthily with deadly intent for broadcasters. Even technology giants such as Amazon are now disrupting the traditional field of sporting rights will themselves have to adapt to the growing reality of D2C if they are to have a future as major players in sports video distribution.

The report traces revenue changes from media rights for major sports and their leagues in the principal geographies of Europe, North America, China, Rest of Asia Pacific and Rest of World, drilling down into differences by region and sport. We pick out the top few sports and individual leagues in each region and track their progress over the next six years.

Companies mentioned in this report:

Amazon, Apple, AT&T, BeIN Sports, BT, Bundesliga, Campeonato Brasileiro, CCTV, Comcast, CBS, Chinese Super League, Discovery, Disney, Econet, EPL, ESPN, Facebook, FIFA, Formula 1, Fox, Google, IPL, Kwesé TV, La Liga, Ligue 1, MLB, MLS, Multichoice, NBA, NBC, Nippon Professional Baseball, NFL, NHL, PGA Golf, PPTV, Serie A, Sky, Star India, Tencent, UEFA, WeChat

Revenue Forecast to 2024

In 2019, esports burst into mainstream public consciousness culminating in Fortnite’s World Cup in July, with an unprecedented audience size and a $30 million pot of prize money.

Today esports can make an individual player just as rich as a real world sports star and the Fortnite World cup peaked at 2 million concurrent views dwarfing all previous esports totals, and will potentially make companies involved richer still.

This has happened because esports has broken through in China and South Korea, and there is more to come from Asia Pacific and it is finally about to leave that core demographic of the ultra-young white and Asian male, as more females and other demographics get involved.
We found that esports revenue will leap from $900 million in 2018 to $5.05 billion in 2024 with revenues split between game publisher fees, sponsorship, media broadcasting rights, tickets and merchandise, tipping and advertising.

The revenue growth is accelerating ahead of the rate for acquiring new esports enthusiasts, which itself will go from 154 million in 2018 to 377 million in 2024. There is a rising revenue per fan.

For Pay TV operators that have yet to make a play in esports, the opportunities will come primarily through growth in casual viewing, attracted by “sanitized” esports competitions with appeal beyond enthusiasts. There will be scope for traditional media firms to gain media rights and sell advertising.

This report “Esports on verge of hypergrowth to $5bn plus gambling Revenue Forecast to 2024” breaks down each revenue stream regionally between North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and the rest of the world.

Companies mentioned in this report

ABC, Alibaba, Amazon, aXiomatic, Baidu, Disney, Douyu, ESL, ESPN, Facebook, Google, Huya, Intel, FIFA, Fortnite, HyperX, Mercedes Benz, MIBR, Modern Times Group, Monster Energy, Newzoo, Red Bull, Sky, Team Liquid, TenCent, Tinder, Twitch, WeChat, WhatsApp, YouTube

For more information contact:
Natalia Szczepanek
Client Relations and Marketing Manager
[email protected]
Office Phone: +44 (0)1179 257019

CDN Forecast to 2024

CDNs will benefit hugely from more and more traffic travelling as high density and “live” video, says a report out this week from Rethink Technology Research’s Rethink TV service.

The new report is entitled, “SRT triggers “live” video surge on global CDNs – CDN Forecast to 2024” and it is part of the Rethink TV series of forecasts, sold as a subscription service.

Video is taking an increasing proportion of CDN traffic and CDNs in turn are expanding their share of all IP traffic. But the main emerging factors will be a surge in live streaming video traffic, and hitched to that a boom in low latency protocols, particularly the SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) and possibly Reliable Internet Stream Transport (RIST) protocols because of their ability to shave latencies much closer to the ultimate limits imposed by the laws of physics.

If you thought the rise of SVoD was fast and extreme, the rise of “live” content will happen even faster and create more changes in both the entertainment landscape and its underlying technology backdrop. SRT has emerged as the protocol of choice for delivering live video as close to “synchronous” as possible.

Live streaming has only just emerged from the shadow of SVoD which has dominated streaming traffic ever since Netflix began ramping a decade ago. Even though SVoD has plenty of room for growth yet, live streaming traffic will rise much more steeply and overtake non live video traffic between 2023 and 2024. Live video accounted for 11 Exabytes compared with total CDN video traffic of 58 EB in 2018, by 2024 it will be 238 EB against 453 EB.

Companies mentioned in this report:

Akamai, Amazon, Amazon Web Services, AT&T, Baidu, Cisco, Comcast, DaCast, Disney, Facebook, FubboTV, Google, Grupo Clarin, Haivision, IBM Cloud Video, Microsoft, Millicast, NBC Universal, Netflix, Peer5, Sky, Skype, Snapchat, Strive, TenCent, Twitter, Vimeo Livestream, Warner Media, WeChat, WhatsApp, Wowza, Youku Tudou, YouTube, YuppTV

For more information contact:
Natalia Szczepanek
Client Relations and Marketing Manager
[email protected]
Office +44 (0)1179 257019

Global DTH revenue set to shed $ billions says new report

Rethink Technology Research’s Rethink TV service has launched a new report which shows how Direct to Home satellite TV (DTH) subscriber falls will accelerate and spread from North America to Europe and eventually to the Far East. Where subscribers numbers rise there will be falls in ARPU.

The new report is entitled, “Who benefits as Global DTH revenue set to shed $ billions – Forecast to 2024” and it is part of the Rethink TV series of forecasts, sold by Rethink as a subscription service.

The decline in DTH will turn out to be terminal, and yet it all began when cable TV began to churn around 2010, a story which spread to the US satellite operators a few years later.

Today the exodus is gathering speed and starting to spread to Europe, leaving operators scrambling to mop up their departing customers via the life rafts of low ARPU OTT.

This makes it impossible to maintain existing high ARPUs at historical levels, and the wheels have just come off for AT&T in the US as DirecTV Now, its stand-alone OTT is seen as an alternative to the main DTH service – both have now been losing subs after initial gains and investors are starting to ask if this is a permanent trend.

And in some parts of the world DTH continues to provide an engine of growth for pay TV – but only in developing markets and only for a short while longer, notably India.

Latin America with it artificially high pay TV ARPU looks less like India and more like the US and sustaining ARPU there will be a thankless challenge.

Companies mentioned in this report:

Amazon Prime Video, America Movil, Astro All Asia Networks, AT&T, BBC, BeIN Media Group, Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board, CanalSat, Cignal, Claro TV, Cyfrowy Polsat, DigiTurk, DirecTV Now, Dish Network, Disney, Eutelsat, Facebook, Federal Communications Commission, Fetch TV, FIFA World Cup, Foxtel, Intelsat, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, Kwese, Mediaset, Movistar, MultiChoice, nc+, Netflix, NewsCorp, Oi TV, OneWeb, Orange, RAI, Sky, Sky Life, SKY PerfecTV!, SES, SFR, Sling TV, Space X, Star India, Tata, Telefonica, Tricolor, TrueVisions, Vrio, World Trade Organization, YouTube Premium.

For more information contact:
Natalia Szczepanek
Client Relations and Marketing Manager
[email protected]
Office +44 (0)1179 257019