Combined, Sky and Vodafone Top the European Pay TV Market with 28% of Subscribers

While the COVID-19 pandemic has hit pay TV providers in other regions hard, particularly in the U.S., that is not the case in Europe. While pay TV subscriptions in some countries, such as the U.K. and Switzerland, have declined, overall pay TV subscriptions among tracked pay TV services grew by 524K in 3Q 2020, reaching 138.93M, up nearly 0.4% QoQ. Sky, which was acquired by Comcast in October 2018, continues to lead the European pay TV market with 20.72M subscribers, followed by Vodafone (18.40M), which jumped to the #2 slot with the acquisition of Liberty Global's operations in Germany, Romania, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in Q3 2019.

The European Pay TV Provider Performance Benchmarking is updated quarterly and is published approximately 8-10 weeks after the close of each quarter. A 5-year rolling forecast for pay TV in Europe and globally can be found in our Subscription TV Forecast, which is produced twice a year.