OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Led by the country’s sports services, Canadian specialty, pay, PPV and VoD television services generated revenues of $4.2 billion in 2014, up 3.1% over the $4.1 billion earned the previous year, according to the CRTC’s statistical and financial report for this sector released Thursday.
Pay, Pay-per-view, Video-on-demand and Specialty Services 2010-2014 said that the increase is largely attributable to a jump in subscription revenues of $160.3 million (or 5.9%) compared to 2013, which more than compensated for the drop of $53.6 million (or -4.2%) in national advertising revenues.
A major driving force for growth in specialty service revenues was sports services (such as TSN, Sportsnet and RDS), which saw their revenues increase by $124.2 million (or 13.6%) in 2014, the report continued. Though revenues continued increasing in 2014, expenditures increased faster, rising from $2.9 billion in 2013 to $3.1 billion in 2014. As a result, profits before interest and taxes (PBIT) dropped from $1.1 billion to approximately $1 billion, and the PBIT margin from 26.5% to 23.7%.
Pay and video-on-demand services reported revenue decreases of 2.1% (or $9.4 million) and 1.3 % (or $3.2 million) respectively in 2014. Bilingual and English-language services yielded a total of $3.5 billion, and French-language services produced revenues of $678.4 million.
These services invested $1.5 billion in the creation of new television programs produced by Canadians, an increase of 12.6% compared to the $1.3 billion invested the previous year. Again, this increase is largely attributable to sports services, whose Canadian programming expenditures increased by $132 million (or 32%) compared to 2013. Of those investments, $432 million went to independent Canadian producers, $376 million of which came from specialty television services. Expenditures related to foreign programming increased from $528 million in 2013 to $574 million in 2014, $389 million of which came from specialty services.
www.crtc.gc.ca
