Netflix to keep US subscriber lead through to 2025

But Disney+ and Hulu combined will come out on top

by Andy Bassett

US subscribers to SVOD services will climb from 199 million in 2019 to 307 million by 2025, predicts new research.

The study by Digital TV Research looked at subscriptions that covered linear channels, movies and TV shows, but not sports, and forecast an increase of over 100 million new subscribers in total across the available services.

According to Simon Murray, Principal Analyst at Digital TV Research, “The average SVoD household will pay for 3.28 SVoD platforms by 2025; up from 2.28 at end-2019. So, the average SVoD home will add one subscription between 2019 and 2025.

The arrival of new services will increase consumer choice and stifle the growth of the well established players like Netflix. However both Netflix and Amazon have such well advanced subscriber numbers that even the likes of Disney+ will struggle to catch them.

Looking more closely, the research predicts Disney will perform better than any of the other newly launched (or about to be launched) services, and an increase from 17.3 million customers at the end of 2019 to almost 48 million by 2025 will place it in third place. The company estimated its subscribers at around 28 million as of Feb 2020.  

Netflix will keep its number one position through to 2025 but the margin closes between it and second place Amazon, with Netflix only seeing stunted growth of less than 5 million while Amazon adds just over 6 million viewers.

Interestingly, Disney’s Hulu service will see decent growth and though it only occupies 4th place in the table, when combined with Disney+, the House of Mouse can boast a greater number of subscriptions at over 88 million, though many customers will have accounts with both so the figure more accurately describes the number of accounts rather than subscribers.

Netflix to keep US subscriber lead through to 2025

Murray commented that by 2025 in the US there will be a dozen platforms, each with more than 5 million paying customers, which underlines how advanced the US market is compared to other territories. The strongest performers are forecast to be Disney+, Peacock and the recently restructured CBS All Access services. Meanwhile, Apple TV+ will attain modest subscription numbers though this will represent growth of over 10 times from the estimated 400,000 initial subscribers (though Apple has yet to release any official numbers).

Finally, of note is the inclusion of YouTube TV and Hulu Live with over 5 million subscribers each, which represents the cord-cutting viewers who will move away from traditional cable or satellite pay TV.

As always with research that attempts to predict future performance, there will be an element of fluidity in these numbers, but do they feel in the right ballpark to AVForums readers? Let us know what you think. 

SourceDigitalTVEurope.com

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