Freeview Could Overtake Sky Next Year

14th December 2005

Taking figures from Ofcom's current and previous Digital TV Update reports, it looks like the number of Freeview households could overtake the number of Sky subscribers next year:

Quarter	Freeview Households (millions)	Sky Subscribers (millions)
Q3 2004	3.914	7.085
Q4 2004	4.592	7.262
Q1 2005	5.059	7.349
Q2 2005	5.178	7.424
Q3 2005	5.776	7.472
Q4 2005	6.242*	7.569*
Q1 2006	6.707*	7.666*
Q2 2006	7.173*	7.762*
Q3 2006	7.638*	7.859*
Q4 2006	8.104*	7.956*

* The figures for Q4 2005 to Q4 2006 are estimates based on the average quarterly increase in the number of households for Freeview over the last year being 465,500 and the quarterly increase in Sky subscribers being 96,750.

The increase in the number of Freeview households could start tailing off slightly from now on, though, because over two-thirds of all households now have digital TV. But the BBC and ITV are launching the Freesat platform -- no doubt with enormous amount of advertising the BBC uses for seemingly everything it launches -- so the advertising for Freesat is likely to make some Sky customers unsubscribe, which would therefore compensate somewhat for the tailing off in the number of Freeview households.