Blog — April 22, 2026
PTS 2026: Philippine pay TV and streaming regulation meets content innovation
By Fed Mendoza
The media landscape in the Philippines continues to evolve as regulatory reforms converge with aggressive content strategies from both traditional and digital platforms. At the 2026 Philippine Tech Show: Level Up, held March 24-26 in SMX Convention Center, Pasay City, Philippines, key government officials and industry leaders outlined a vision for connectivity and content that promises to reshape how Filipinos consume entertainment while bridging the digital divide across the archipelago.
The conference started with a message from the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) secretary Henry Rhoel Aguda, highlighting the government's commitment to digital transformation as a top priority under the present administration. Secretary Aguda emphasized that connectivity is not merely about infrastructure but serves as a pipeline for opportunity, empowerment and inclusion. He envisioned that when a community gains internet access, it opens doors to education, business opportunities and government services that were previously out of reach. This is realized through DICT's "digital bayanihan," a collaborative approach where government, industry, innovators and communities work together to expand connectivity throughout the nation.
Alongside this backdrop of regulatory reform and infrastructure expansion, content providers in the pay TV platform are positioning themselves to capitalize on the growing connected population. Viva Communications, Inc. CEO Vincent Del Rosario outlined how local content providers are competing in the over-the-top streaming space dominated by global giants like Netflix, Amazon and Disney+. Viva's journey into the OTT business began during the 2020 lockdown, when the company had 17 movies meant for cinema with approximately half a billion Philippine pesos in investment and no clear path to release them. This crisis prompted the company to explore streaming as an alternative distribution channel.
Del Rosario candidly admitted that Viva was "tech handicapped" when entering the streaming market, but the company leveraged its vast library of over a thousand films and deep understanding of Filipino audience preferences. The challenge was competing against well-funded global brands backed by massive capital and established technology infrastructure. The answer lay in strategic pricing that made the service accessible to the local market. Viva's platform pricing proved disruptive enough that Del Rosario claims it was copied by foreign platforms. Before the local entrant's arrival, basic subscription tiers of foreign streaming services were priced around 250 pesos to 300 pesos per month, but following Viva's launch with significantly more affordable pricing, foreign platforms adjusted their offerings to be more competitive.
Filipino content has proven remarkably dominant on streaming platforms, consistently appearing in top movies and series charts. This content dominance has influenced Netflix's strategy, with the platform announcing a slate heavily focused on local productions. Viva has actively pursued partnerships with internet and cable TV operators, recognizing the natural fit between streaming platforms and operator businesses. The company has established partnerships with Converge, Dito, PLDT - Smart and various provincial operators. Del Rosario emphasized that with telco companies bundle streaming services with their packages, it drives data usage and adds value for subscribers. This bundling approach explains why IPTV services represent the fastest-growing segment in the market, with subscriptions projected to increase from about 472,000 in 2025 to nearly 1.2 million in 2032, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan.
ABS-CBN Corp.'s streaming platform iWant, presented by VP and Head of iWant Jolly Estaris, represents another approach to capturing the Filipino streaming audience. The platform's history stretches back to 2003 when ABS-CBN launched its first OTT iteration called ABS-CBN Now, designed to provide entertainment and news for overseas Filipino workers and their families. This predated Netflix's streaming service, making ABS-CBN an early pioneer in digital content delivery. The platform evolved through several iterations, becoming TFC Now in 2007, then splitting into TFC.TV for overseas audiences and iWantTV for domestic viewers in the 2010s.
The loss of ABS-CBN's franchise in 2020 pushed for a strategic business overhaul, with the platform merging brands and eventually collaborating with rival TV network GMA to feature GMA content through a special bundle available outside the Philippines. This collaboration between competing networks demonstrated the pragmatic approach required in the evolving media landscape. By 2025, user feedback indicated that the platform's user experience was becoming outdated, prompting a relaunch focused on revamping the entire user interface, improving brand positioning and producing breakthrough original content.
As of the fourth quarter of 2025, iWant serves approximately 2.2 million active users monthly, with an impressive average daily viewing time of 110 minutes. The platform's content is predominantly free in the Philippines, with premium subscription tiers offering advanced access to popular series like "Hotel 88" seven days ahead of television broadcast for just 35 pesos per month, which Estaris claims is the cheapest subscription in the Philippines.
For 2026, iWant's strategy rests on three pillars: creating more top-tier content including originals like "Misbehave" and the first Hollywood production "Nurse2Dead," focusing on accessibility through partnerships with telecommunications and cable operators, and building more distribution partnerships. The platform is also venturing into micro-dramas, the vertical short-form content format that has proven successful in Asian markets. Additionally, iWant announced that Cinema One, a leading Philippine pay TV channel owned by ABS-CBN, is now available as a 24-hour live channel on the platform, expanding the variety of content available to users. This integration of traditional pay TV channels into streaming platforms creates a hybrid model where subscribers can access both linear television and on-demand content through a single interface, enhancing the overall value of pay TV subscriptions and reducing the incentive to cord-cut entirely.
The Philippine pay TV market's resilience, even as it faces competition from online streaming, is tied to the strategic innovations deployed by content providers like Viva and ABS-CBN. While cable TV households are expected to decline long-term with approximately 2.8 million subscribers by 2032, and DTH increasing to 5.5 million subscriptions over the same forecast period, these platforms are not merely surviving on legacy infrastructure — they maintain a sizeable market presence through content partnerships and bundling strategies that blur the lines between traditional pay TV and digital streaming.
We model the aggregate pay TV subscription in the Philippines to grow from 8.4 million subscriptions in 2025 to nearly 9.5 million in 2032, representing a seven-year compound annual growth rate of 1.6%, reflecting not stagnation but adaptation to media landscape changes. The forecasted retention is attributed to the value-added content strategies being implemented by platforms like Viva and iWant, which transform pay TV subscriptions from simple channel packages into comprehensive entertainment ecosystems.
Global Broadband & Pay TV is a regular feature from S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan.
This article was published by S&P Global Market Intelligence and not by S&P Global Ratings, which is a separately managed division of S&P Global.