Pay-TV penetration in the Americas is set to decline through 2022 due to ongoing cord-cutting trends in North America, where an increasing number of households are swapping their traditional pay-TV subscriptions for over-the-top (OTT) alternatives, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

In Latin America, where cord-cutting is still not affecting any markets yet, GlobalData expects subscriber growth to decelerate in the coming years.

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Eulalia Marín-Sorribes, Technology Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Despite its initial status as a complement to traditional pay-TV service, cord-cutting and cord-shaving trends are pushing pay-TV operators across the region to embrace the OTT world. Over the past several years, a significant number of pay-TV service providers have launched OTT video services to protect their market position and enhance their existing TV proposition with OTT features.”

Pay-TV operators are also establishing partnerships with pure OTT players in order to enhance their content propositions, an option often combined with their proprietary OTT platforms. Netflix has become one of the most prolific OTT platforms in this regard, stablishing successful global and regional partnerships with some of the leading pay-TV players in both mature and emerging pay-TV markets.