The Television Struggle: An Assessment of Over-the-Top Television Evolutions in a Cable Dominant Market

Abstract

Traditional television screens have lost their monopoly on television content. With a helping hand of digitalization, the introduction of ever more screens in our lives and increasingly faster network technologies, a wide variety of alternative screens and sources of television content are trying to conquer a piece of the audiences' viewing time. This evolution calls for new kinds of services and has the potential to change the current television market. This paper assesses the evolution of over-the-top television services in Flanders, a cable dominant market in which several OTT TV services emerged during the past two years. By presenting an analysis of the market and the results of a large scale end-user survey (n: 1,269) we provide insights on the future of OTT TV and its impact on the current television ecosystem. In the Flemish market, both traditional broadcasters, the channels themselves and new market entrants are launching OTT TV services. These market evolutions are being related to user expectations and usage patterns in order to assess the challenges for future television. This also allows to make assumptions on future scenarios regarding so-called "cord- cutting" behaviour. Because of the high adoption of triple play bundles and fierce competition between the two dominant television distributors, a large scale video cord-cutting scenario is highly unlikely for the Flemish television market. Although OTT TV might gain importance, it will be hard for 'OTT TV-only' services to replace the traditional television distributors.

Keywords: over-the-top television, cord-cutting, television market, cable television.

JEL Classification: D12, D40, O33, Y80