BB Media: LatAm OTT penetration is 45% or 76 million households

92 million Latin American homes are today connected to broadband (53% penetration), with 82% streaming at 5MB and 54% over 20MB. “This is more than enough to stream in HD,” said Tomás Gennari, CEO of BB Media during his opening of an online conference to introduce and educate top Latin American channels, publishers, and media to OTT best practices, processes, and business models. The free event was presented by OTT. X & BB Media.

“Within broadband penetration, 86% are using OTT. We are including every business model such as AVOD, SVOD, and TV everywhere” said Gennari.

To show how the subscription to pay TV services is evolving and the progress of streaming, he noted that 24% of the market is using a pay TV service and at least one OTT service.

“Another figure that is making a lot of noise is related to cord-cutters and cord-nevers, where penetration is 11% in homes that only use streaming and this segment has grown 21%. There are also households that have never used pay TV or OTT, and others that don’t even have a broadband connection. Unfortunately, this is the reality for part of Latin America” said Gennari.

Another interesting fact is that OTT penetration in households in the region is 45%, more than 76 million households. “This is an average for the entire region because it varies a lot between Mexico, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. On average, of those with broadband access, at least 75% have a VOD subscription; 66% have at least one AVOD and this will continue to grow in the next two years. The TV everywhere model has a little less penetration (40%), but it comes with a problem with piracy in the region, so we estimate 29% penetration” he said.

Gennari concluded that in Latin America there is an average of six streaming platforms used per household, but this figure includes piracy and shared accounts. “If we look at SVOD, on average 2.9 services are used including account sharing”. He added that this data compared to the US, where the average per household is seven different streaming services and five are SVOD, “means that in Latin America there is a lot of room for growth.”