Over the past five years, Poland's television market has been undergoing significant transformation. However, unlike some markets in the United States and Western Europe, this change has not been characterized by the rapid disappearance of traditional pay TV. On the contrary, pay TV remains a widely used service in Poland, although its technological foundation, service offering and, most importantly, consumers' relationship with television are changing.
Traditional cable and satellite television are gradually losing the dominant position they have held for years. At the same time, IPTV, OTT and SVOD are growing rapidly, while pay TV operators themselves are seeking to move beyond simply distributing television channels and evolve into platforms that offer television, internet, VOD, streaming and OTT services within a single ecosystem.
According to 2024 data, 5.6 million households in Poland used cable television. Three major operators - Play/UPC, Vectra and Orange - accounted for 58.5% of this market, the remaining market share is held by other operators, including small and regional cable operators. Most of these operators are also adding internet services, as the business model based solely on television services is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain economically, while broadband is becoming a major source of revenue.
Official data from the Polish Office of Electronic Communications (UKE) show that pay TV continues to have high penetration in Poland.
In 2022, approximately 10.83 million customers used pay TV services. Annual market revenue amounted to approximately PLN 6.79 billion.
In 2023, pay TV services were present in approximately 75% of Polish households, while market revenue reached approximately PLN 6.8 billion.
In 2024, pay TV penetration increased further to 76.3%, while market revenue rose to approximately PLN 6.9 billion.
Therefore, one of the key characteristics of the Polish market is that, despite the rapid growth of OTT, the traditional pay TV subscriber base has not collapsed.
If we look only at the overall pay TV market, the sector appears relatively stable. However, breaking the market down by technology reveals a very different picture.
Satellite TV Is Losing Ground
The main losses are occurring in satellite television. In 2020, more than half of pay TV customers still relied on satellite television, although UKE had already identified a gradual decline in the share of satellite platforms. Over the past five years, satellite TV has lost several percentage points of market share, and this trend continues.
Cable television has proven more resilient. Unlike satellite TV, traditional cable networks have been considerably more successful in retaining their customers.
According to UKE data, in 2023 cable networks served approximately 4 million households.
In recent years, cable pay TV has accounted for approximately 36-38% of the market, and UKE forecasts no sharp decline in the medium term.
One of the key structural changes in Poland's television market is therefore that consumers are not necessarily cancelling pay TV - they are changing the technology through which they receive it.
The growth of OTT has not led to mass cancellation of cable television in Poland. However, it has forced cable operators to change the product itself.
A modern cable TV offering increasingly means much more than simply providing 100, 150 or more television channels. Its value is shifting toward additional services such as Replay TV, Catch-up TV, VOD, multi-device viewing, mobile applications, Smart TV functionality, cloud-based features and integration with OTT platforms.
As a result, a consumer may still technically be a cable operator's subscriber, but from a service-consumption perspective, they are increasingly receiving several services simultaneously rather than simply purchasing television channels.
IPTV as the Bridge to the New Television Model
IPTV is particularly important in this transformation. While consumers traditionally had to choose mainly between cable and satellite television, television delivery is increasingly moving toward broadband infrastructure.
In 2022, IPTV already accounted for 16% of pay TV customers.
Poland also has the necessary infrastructure to support this development.
By 2024, the number of fixed internet subscribers had reached 9.8 million, representing annual growth of 3.2%. At the same time, high-speed internet covered 83.6% of Polish households.
This provides an important foundation for the continued growth of IPTV and OTT.
The faster and more reliable fixed internet becomes, the less television services depend on a specific traditional distribution technology.
OTT Becomes a Mainstream Television Product
Polish consumers increasingly perceive OTT as a mainstream television product rather than as an alternative to television.
According to the 2025 VideoTrack study, Netflix was by far the leading paid streaming service among users, with 73%, followed by Max at 27%, Prime Video at 24%, Disney+ at 23% and Canal+ at 13%.
An especially interesting aspect is where consumers purchase access to these services.
Approximately 35% of paid streaming users purchase access to streaming platforms through a pay TV or telecommunications operator.
This fundamentally challenges the idea that OTT is necessarily an enemy of pay TV.
For an operator, Netflix, Max or Disney+ can be both a competitor and a component of its own product offering.
The New Pay TV Model: If You Can't Beat OTT, Sell OTT
This is one of the most important business changes in the Polish market over the past five years.
The role of a pay TV operator is no longer to protect its customers from Netflix. Instead, it increasingly seeks to sell Netflix to those same customers.
Under this model, consumers can obtain from a single provider:
- internet;
- traditional television channels;
- IPTV;
- VOD;
- catch-up and replay services;
- sports content;
- Netflix;
- Max;
- Disney+;
- and other streaming services.
As a result, the logic of competition itself is changing.
Operators are no longer focused solely on selling television packages. They are increasingly seeking to become the customer's primary video aggregator.
The Biggest Change Is Happening on the TV Screen
The amount of time consumers spend watching television is not changing dramatically. What is changing is what they watch on the screen.
This is precisely the space in which all video platforms are competing: securing a larger share of viewing on the big screen.
Nielsen data show that Netflix and YouTube consumption is increasingly shifting toward the television screen.
In 2024, approximately 80% of Netflix consumption took place on a TV screen, rising to 84% in 2025. At the same time, Netflix accounted for approximately 1.8% of total video viewing on the television screen.
A similar trend can be observed with YouTube. Between 2024 and 2025, the share of YouTube consumption taking place on a TV screen increased from 27% to 29%. YouTube accounted for approximately 2.4% of total video viewing on the television screen.
Together, these two global online platforms already account for approximately 4% of viewing time on the television screen.
This illustrates a fundamental change in consumer behavior.
If the traditional assumption was:
«"I don't need a TV for Netflix,"»
the behavior is increasingly shifting toward:
«"I watch Netflix on my TV."»
This clearly demonstrates that television consumption itself is not disappearing. Rather, the content consumed on the television screen is changing.
The Future of Television Is Not the End of Pay TV
The past five years of Poland's television market reveal an apparent paradox: OTT is growing rapidly, but pay TV is not disappearing.
What is changing is not so much the existence of the television screen as its role.
Consumers still spend several hours in front of the big screen, but they no longer want to depend entirely on a traditional program schedule. They want live television and on-demand content; local channels and Netflix; sports and YouTube.
This is why the main competitor to a traditional cable operator in the future may not necessarily be another cable company, but any platform capable of capturing a share of the consumer's screen time.
At the same time, OTT is no longer simply a threat to traditional operators. It can become a component of their own product offering.
The key outcome of Poland's ongoing transformation is therefore not "the end of television," but the transition from a channel-distribution business to a video-platform business.
The companies that succeed in maintaining a direct relationship with consumers in the coming years will ultimately determine the next phase of the market - whether they are broadcasters, cable/IPTV operators or global streaming platforms.
Sources:
www.uke.gov.pl
www.nielsen.com
www.kim.gov.pl
www.telecomrader.pl
