This year, digital commercial revenues on online platforms will represent 55% of the overall TV and video market globally. This is compared with just above 25% only five years ago. The video industry has been accelerating its transition to digital in recent years, particularly impacted by cord-cutting, especially in North America, and by the impressive growth of Video Sharing Platforms spearheaded by younger audiences’ consumption habits. Linear TV revenues peaked in the early 2020s, but have been experiencing a slow decline year-on-year since then. Public funding remained stable and still accounts for a substantial share of media revenues in Europe, but is virtually nonexistent in the American landscape. Pay TV revenues have seen the sharpest decline post-pandemic and are poised to keep diving in the next 5 years, especially under the weight of North American cable TV revenues’ collapse: from $55 billion in 2020 to under $40 billion projected this year, and down to $23 billion by 2030 as TV services accelerate their migration to OTT platforms. Are global video platforms eating into TV broadcasters’ advertising market shares? In mature markets, 2025 was an especially harsh wake-up call for well-established TV brands. H1 revenues of leading TV broadcasters in Western Europe saw significant drops year-on-year (-5% for Atresmedia, -7% for ITV and RTL in German-speaking markets, -8% for Prosieben and Mediaset Spain), with clear signs that the transition to digital offers and BVOD services is nowhere near compensating for the losses on linear TV ad sales. In 2025, Dataxis estimates that TV advertising revenues across Europe will drop by half a billion EUR, with the strongest decline experienced by British and German broadcasters. Consolidation has already started, spearheaded by RTL’s acquisition of Sky in DACH markets announced in June. At the regional level, MediaForEurope is stepping up its ambitions and has secured total ownership of Prosieben in September, now looking at an expansion in Portugal with Impresa. In the UK, Comcast, the owner of Sky, also made a bid to acquire ITV’s broadcast activities. In Asia-Pacific, the drop in revenues from broadcast advertising is also particularly harsh. Linear TV ad revenues in the region in 2025 will represent just three-quarters of what they were during their peak in 2021. The depreciation of the Japanese Yen strongly impacts this figure, despite linear ad revenues remaining stable in local currency. Digital revenues are growing particularly rapidly in the region thanks to the explosion of relatively untapped markets so far. Excluding China, India will become the largest market in value for OTT subscription services, overtaking South Korea, Australia and Japan within the next 2 years. Those may all be signs that traditional TV actors’ market shares have been eaten out by digital global...
