Freeview is threatening Sky’s dominance in parts of the UK, according to a new spatial model of the TV landscape by Point Topic.
According to the model, Sky’s market shares can be as high as 40% and as low as 27% depending on the options available in a given region.
Tim Johnson, chief executive of Point Topic, said: “Freeview is a much more effective competitor to Sky than cable, taking almost 9% of Sky’s market share where the two face each other.
“Our figures suggest that Sky loses about 2 million customers to Freeview across the UK as a whole. The challenge will get even stronger as full digital television is rolled out across the UK between now and 2012.”
BSkyB’s recent acquisition of a major 17.9% share in ITV might help change the scenario, Johnson believes. He said: “If BSkyB can leverage its new relationship with ITV to take up Freeview channels and carry out some cross promotion, it will be much better placed to push back competition from free digital terrestrial channels.”
However, Point Topic adds that Freeview does not impact greatly on NTL:Telewest’s market share when it is present. The group has a consistent market penetration of about 21%, even in areas where both Sky and Freeview are available.
The research firm says that one in three households is still watching only analogue-terrestrial TV. Meanwhile, TV over broadband (IPTV) is currently just a small part of the UK market, with 45,000 Video Networks customers, although that could change over the next year now that Tiscali has acquired Video Networks and BT is launching BT Vision.
| Availability Of TV Technology By UK Household Market Share (% Of Households, June 2006) |
| Availability Area |
Freeview |
Sky |
Cable TV |
Video Networks |
| Sky Only |
0.00 |
40.10 |
0.00 |
0.00 |
| Sky & Freeview |
39.54 |
31.44 |
0.00 |
0.09 |
| Sky & NTL:Telewest |
0.00 |
28.66 |
20.69 |
0.06 |
| Sky & NTL:Telewest & Freeview |
35.11 |
27.38 |
20.87 |
0.29 |
| Total/Average |
25.04 |
30.30 |
12.88 |
0.18 |
A recent report from IMS Research said that worldwide digital terrestrial TV (DTT) is expected to more than triple over the next five years, with growth driven primarily in Western Europe (see Global DTT Expected to Treble).
Meanwhile, independent market analyst Datamonitor said estimate that by 2010, 95% of UK households will have made the transition to digital TV and the UK will remain the most penetrated digital market in Europe (see UK Only Country In Europe With Over 50% DTV Services).
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