Before the holidays I wrote a story on what is the size of the global space economy. That story included a video with Euroconsult’s Nathan de Ruiter discussing their Space Economy Report 2019. I knew at the time that a new report was forthcoming. What I didn’t know was that the report would see the value of the space economy jump from US$298 to US$385 million. Here’s what you need to know to understand the report.
The new report needs the following context. The data used for the estimate comes from the calendar year 2019, and importantly, the methodology from the previous report has materially changed.
In an email to SpaceQ, a Euroconsult representative told me that the methodology had changed. Nowhere in the press release, the free extract (PDF) you can get, or on the website page is this mentioned.
The quote we were provided states; “New methodology and approach in the development of the report. Global government space budgets have been added to the traditional valuation of commercial space revenues in order to provide a comprehensive view of the entire space economy.”
While the website page does have a section labelled “New in this edition” and does say “The addition of global government space budgets has been added to the traditional valuation of commercial space revenues in order to provide a holistic, top-to-bottom view of the entire space economy,” it does not say a “new methodology and approach” was used in creating the report. It may seem like a small thing to some people, but it must be mentioned when you’re talking about a ~29% increase in revenues from their 2019 to 2020 reports.
The other important item to mention is that report includes updated forecasts “following the worldwide impact of the COVID crisis.” This should not be confused with the actual substantive data of the value of the space economy.
Highlights from the Space Economy Report 2020
Here’s some of the highlights from the report available in the free extract:
- In 2020, the global space economy is estimated at a total value of US$385 billion. The consolidated space economy consists of government funding for their space activities as well as commercial space revenues which are either Business-to-Government or Business-to-Business.
- In 2020, government space budgets totalled US$83 billion, of which US$13 billion were estimated to be contracted for commercial services downstream (i.e. funding of US$70 billion estimated when excluding expenditures related to commercial services). Commercial space revenues are estimated at US$315 billion in 2020.
- While 2020 government budgets were unaffected by Covid, certain segments of the commercial value chain were more exposed to 2020 economic turbulences resulting to a 2% revenue decline against 2019.
- Upstream revenues from commercial activities in manufacturing, launch services and ground segment totaled $US9 billion in 2020, accounting for 3% of commercial satellite revenues. The commercial downstream segment, which includes operations and satellite services, had revenues of US$293 billion in 2020, 97% of the total commercial market.
- The largest drivers remain satellite navigation and communications which account for 58% and 34% of commercial revenues respectively; drive by B2C applications. In comparison, EO still accounts for a marginal 1% of the total value. Satnav has surpassed satcom, growing from about one-third of the commercial revenues in 2015 to over 50% in 2020.
You can buy the full report from the Euroconsult website.