While cord-cutting has hit pay TV providers in other regions hard, particularly in the U.S., that is not the case in Europe. Overall, European pay TV providers tracked lost 172K subscribers in Q4 2020, a significant improvement over the 811K lost in Q3 2020. Sky, which was acquired by Comcast in October 2018, continues to lead the European pay TV market with 20.73M subscribers, followed by Vodafone (18.42M), and Tricolor (14.05M). Overall, the top 5 pay TV providers in Europe account for over half (54.1%) of all pay TV subscriptions in the region.
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.