Over The Top media services income is set to rise rapidly over the next five years, with revenue growth to 2026 expected to outpace increases in TV subscription revenue across Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria. But this is from a relatively small base, meaning that revenue itself will remain low. In Kenya, Over The Top (OTT) revenue will total just $8.9million in 2026, whereas TV subscription revenue will total $ 420million.
According to PwC Africa Entertainment and Media Outlook 2022-2026, Over the Top has made inroads across Africa in recent years, and the continent is led by two platforms: Netflix and Showmax.
Showmax, African pay-TV provider Multichoices’s OTT offering, has a slate of African originals and global sports coverage to pull in viewers. Showmax also has a partnership deal with telecom operators in the region, providing both carrier billing and promotional pricing opportunities for the public. Netflix, meanwhile has a vast content library and a regular cadence of updated original and licensed content.
The platform’s first Kenyan series, family drama Country Queen, was released in July last year. Disney+ launched in South Africa in May 2022, accompanied by 2,277 titles-1,332 movies and 945 series. While the platform has yet to announce rollout dates for Nigeria or Kenya, it has increased its footprint in Africa, launching in Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, Libya and Tunisia in mid-2022.
Global OTT giant Amazon Prime Video also launched a local service in Nigeria in August 2022, meaning that customers can purchase a subscription using local currency and without a VPN. The service made similar moves in South Africa in November 2021.
“As such, OTT revenue is set to rise rapidly in the next five years, with revenue growth to 2026 expected to outpace increases in TV subscription revenue across all the three markets. But this is from a small a relatively base, meaning that revenueitself will remain low.”
The PwC Africa Entertainment and Media Outlook 2022-2026 has been built by starting with the collection of historical data from a variety of sources. A baseline of historical data is collected in the first instance from a publicly available information, including from trade associations and government agencies.
MOBILE GAMING
According to the outlook, African markets young, tech savvy populations are the driving force behind the video games sector across these nations. 40 per cent of South Africa’s population play games, compared to 23 per cent in Nigeria and 22 per cent in Kenya. Gamers across these African markets overwhelmingly prefer to play via mobile devices.
In Kenya, Sensor Tower reported that eFootball PES 2021 was the most popular mobile game in the country in 2021.
At a global level, video games revenue is predominantly digital, with just 8.1 per cent of total spend coming from non-digital categories in 2021. “This is atrend reflected in the three African markets. Nigeria has the most-digitised market, with digital spend accounting for 99.8 per cent of revenue in 2021, and this is set to reach 100 per cent in 2026.”
“There is an increasing number of African pro-gamers, including Kenyan Mortal Kombat gamer Beast, and Queen Arrow, Kenya’s first female professional esports athlete, who specializes in Tekken 7.”
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