Prices for pay-TV in the Czech Republic continue to rise, yet interest in these services is growing. On the other hand, some viewers remain loyal to free terrestrial broadcasting (DTT), which has long held a strong position in the country. This is according to Atmedia' s Atmedia Index research for the first half of this year.
The average monthly amount that viewers spend on services provided by satellite, cable or IPTV operators rose to CZK 430 in the first half of this year, an increase of 9% year-on-year. Before that, the monthly amount for pay TV stayed around CZK 390 for quite a long time," said Michaela Suráková, Managing Director at Atmedia.
Despite the rising prices, the interest in pay TV is not decreasing, with IPTV recording the biggest growth. "The share of viewers who use IPTV or cable TV as their main platform for receiving TV broadcasts has already exceeded 50%," Michaela Suráková said. The growing interest in IPTV is related to the fact that more and more households have a TV set connected to the Internet, which allows viewers to enjoy new options for watching content. The main reasons why viewers use pay-TV operators' services include the ability to rewatch shows, rewind advertising, watch TV stations on multiple devices or access stations that are not available on free terrestrial broadcasts.
Although IPTV is the dominant platform today, a part of the Czech population still uses only free-to-air terrestrial broadcasting, which has had a strong position in the Czech Republic for a long time. "The main reason is the sufficient supply of TV stations in terrestrial multiplexes - viewers can choose between dozens of stations of different genres," Suráková said, adding that some viewers are therefore not motivated to pay for TV content. Specifically, 29% of these viewers do not want to spend money on pay TV at all and 19% consider pay TV too expensive.
However, if they decided to use pay TV, they would be willing to pay between 100 and 400 CZK per month. "This is the so-called broader range of price acceptability, and we determined the range based on the atmedia index research for the first half of this year," Suráková says. According to her, the optimal price point is CZK 150 per month. For this amount, viewers would expect to have access to a service that offers more than 100 TV stations, at least 70 of which are in HD quality, the ability to rewatch and record programmes, or the ability to watch video content on four devices simultaneously.
Source: AtmediaSource: mediaguru.cz