Movistar turns cheap rivals into background noise with 3.8 m streaming addicts
While DIGI bleeds the market with €20 fiber-and-mobile bundles, Movistar just added 278 000 streaming subscribers last year and booked its best P&L since 2018. The math is brutal: you can save pennies on your bill, or you can watch every LaLiga match and Oscar-nominated Sirat for 9,99 €. Most Spaniards are choosing the second screen.
The 9,99 € trap that keeps on giving
Telefónica opened Movistar Plus+ to non-customers in summer 2023. The price: 14 €, then a trimmed-down 9,99 € tier. No contract, no technician, no router. The result: a 7,9 % year-on-year surge that tripled the growth rate of 2022. Analysts who swore Spaniards only cared about the cheapest megabyte now watch a platform that adds more users in twelve months than Vodafone TV has managed since launch.
Inside the blue HQ they call it OTT gravity: once the app is on the living-room TV, the mobile and fiber cross-sell becomes a soft push instead of a cold call. Churn data backs the theory: although Movistar keeps losing low-end broadband lines, the ARPU of those who stay keeps climbing. DIGI can undercut connectivity; it cannot serve a Champions League night produced in 4K HDR with a side of Goya-winning originals.
Content is the new lock-in
Los Domingos bagged best picture and best director; Sirat earned two Oscar nods. Both premiered on Movistar Plus+ before any theatre. That pipeline—football rights plus festival bait—cost Telefónica north of 1,2 € billion over five years, but it weaponises customer lifetime value in a way gigabit discounts never will. Vodafone TV and DIGI TV together do not reach a tenth of the Spanish originals slate green-lit for 2025.
The catch arrives in April: older smart TVs lose native support. Executives shrug—an HDMI dongle costs 29 € and the call-center script is ready. Translation: if you want the match, you will pay the dongle tax and stay inside the walled garden a little longer.
So the headline that keeps CFOs awake is no longer who has the cheapest 300 Mbps, but who owns the remote. Movistar answered: 3,8 million remotes and counting. The fiber price war? Background noise on a commentary feed that cash-flows every month.