Thai entertainment and media revenues to reach THB600bn in 2025
Thai entertainment and media (E&M) revenues are expected to reach THB601bn in 2025, resulting from a 4.45% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) from 2021 to 2025. With the resurgence of cinema, music, radio and podcasts and out-of-home advertising businesses, the industry’s total revenue this year will be boosted to more than THB500bn, even after the 6% growth drop last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These figures come from PwC’s Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2021-2025.
Thai E&M is forecast to have a 4% CAGR for total spending, to THB505bn in 2021. This pick-up would follow last year’s 6% decline (THB484bn) after the pandemic hit.
“While the Entertainment and Media outlook in Thailand will continue to be impacted by the pandemic this year, some E&M segments have benefitted from a consumer shift toward digital platforms. This has helped offset the slower growth in other major segments that we saw a year earlier. We expect to see average growth over the next five years to be around 4 to 5% per year,” said Tithinun Vankeo, Assurance Partner and Entertainment & Media Leader for PwC Thailand.
PwC’s Outlook provides revenue data and predictions for 14 industry segments across 53 territories, including Thailand. Looking across the five-year forecast period, from 2021 to 2025, Outlook forecasts that the top three fastest-growing segments this year will be cinema (growing at 47% from last year to THB7.8bn), followed by music, radio and podcasts (27% to THB11.9bn) and finally out-of-home advertising (24% to THB5bn).
In contrast, the traditional TV and home video segment and the books segment will be the most vulnerable, with negative growths of -3% and -2% respectively.
The spending rebound for Thai E&M is in line with global spending, which is expected to grow 7% from last year to THB68tn (USD2tn) with a 4.61% CAGR overall across the next five years. This growth is fuelled by a strong demand for digital content and advertising.
Streaming businesses, a game changer for the Thai E&M industry
Outlook shows that the COVID-19 pandemic has played a vital role in driving shifts in the E&M industry as a whole. Instead of going out to the cinema for entertainment, consumers are more and more into using streaming platforms, which also offer shows normally on broadcast TV. And since they’re stuck inside, many younger consumers immerse themselves in their mobile devices, searching for content and playing games.
Tithinun continued to say that this growing Thai internet user trend will make streaming businesses outshine others this year.
“As long as consumers spend more and more time on online platforms, over-the-top video and streaming video businesses will keep up their pace and continue to grow.
“We’re seeing the rising trend of competitiveness in OTT video and subscription video-on-demand business, both in terms of price and promotion. Video games and e-sports is another segment that has been growing continuously for many years, and according to the study, Thailand has the highest number of people who play video games in the world,” she said.
According to the Digital 2021: Thailand report by DataReportal, there were 48.59 million internet users in Thailand in January 2021. Internet penetration stood at 69.5% and the country also had 90.66 million mobile connections in the same period. These statistics indicate an increasing demand for media and entertainment.
“The popularity of OTT and video streaming will create more opportunities, but also more challenges. Operators will see more and more competition and will have to formulate strategies to penetrate the growing market and generate sales.
“Choosing the right platforms and content customised for each target audience, together with understanding the external and internal context and market factors, will help operators to adapt and offer services or content at the expected speed. These will help create a competitive advantage as well,” Tithinun said.
