Broadband TV News: UK loses 0.5m SVOD subscribers

Story from Broadband TV News:

The decline in the UK’s streaming market is gathering pace, with 488,000 households cancelling 1.66 million SVOD subscriptions in the second quarter.

According to Kantar’s latest Entertainment on Demand data, this follows 1.51 million cancellations in Q1 this year, with the decline driven in almost equal part by a decrease in households taking out new subscriptions and an increase in those cancelling services.

Kantar’s data shows that the largest drop in penetration is seen in the youngest households, with those with under 24s present seeing SVOD penetration drop by -2.6% points compared to a drop of just -0.5%. in 55–64-year-old households.

The study also showed that:

Between April to June 2022, the number of VOD-enabled households that subscribed to at least one video streaming service in Great Britain fell to 16.42 million, down -488,000, quarter on quarter, representing 56% of households. This follows a fall of 215,000 in the first quarter of this year. The 56% of households compares to 58% in Q1 and 57% of households in Q2.

Obi-Wan Kenobi from Disney Plus was the most enjoyed SVOD title in Q2, followed by Stranger Things from Netflix.

1.66 million SVOD services were cancelled by households in Q2, up 10% from the previous quarter and 1.21 million a year ago.

The proportion of consumers planning to cancel SVOD services and stating the primary reason as ‘wanting to save money’ dipped slightly from an all-time high in Q1 (38%) to 36% in Q2, but remains significantly higher than a year earlier (24%).

Overall, only 50% of households agreed or strongly agreed they get good value for money from their spend on SVOD services, down from 57% a year earlier.

Kantar notes that as inflation continues to rise across the UK, reaching 9.1% at the end of May 2022, its clear consumers are continuing to search for ways to reign in their household spending.

However, those leaving the SVOD category do not shun TV in its entirety. In fact, almost two thirds of those who dropped out the SVOD category in Q2, still used BBC iPlayer at least weekly.

Commenting on the findings of the research, Dominic Sunnebo, global insight director, Kantar, Worldpanel Division, said: “In Q2, we observed how British consumers continued to cancel subscriptions across the board. In terms of the TV streaming market, the decline in subscriptions is being driven largely by younger ages. Although, it is worth noting that this group often have a wider variety of entertainment sources, including BBC iPlayer and free services such as TikTok, suggesting that this age is still interested in viewing TV streaming, just for a lower cost. Disney performed well in Q2 because of its broad and diverse content inventory whereas Apple TV’s success in the UK market came because of focusing on local content, such as popular British TV shows. With Netflix announcing its partnership with Microsoft to build an advertisement-supported tier of its streaming service, it will be interesting to see how it performs in the next quarter against its competitors”.

Kantar notes that Disney+ had a strong quarter with share of new subscribers growing to 21.5% in Q2. For the first ever time, Disney Plus Net Promoter Score (NPS), a measure of subscriber advocacy, overtook Netflix and is now the highest across all major SVOD services in the UK.

Netflix saw a NPS drop of -10 vs. the previous quarter, indicating significant challenges in the quarters ahead. The pronounced decline in Netflix subscriber advocacy is predominantly driven by a perceived decline in value for money from the service and satisfaction with the quality of the shows. This comes despite a slew of high-profile releases from Netflix in the quarter including new seasons of hit series Stranger Things and Ozark.

Disney now see higher satisfaction rankings than Netflix across quality of shows, amount of original content, number of new release films, variety of classic films and amount of kids content. Forward looking, next quarter planned cancellation rates for Disney+ fell to an all-time low of just 3.2%. Netflix planned cancellation is increasingly driven by multiple rounds of price rises, with 27% of consumers specifically citing the price rises as their reason to cancel, and a further 46% saying they want to save money.

Meanwhile, AppleTV+ achieved its highest ever share of new SVOD subscribers for the second consecutive quarter, holding 9.9% share. It’s also clear that AppleTV+ is not just succeeding in winning new customers, but is also seeing higher levels of engagement among its existing subscriber base. Satisfaction with the amount of original content on AppleTV+ is at an all-time high and planned cancellation is at an all-time low.

NOW held the third spot in new SVOD subscribers in the quarter with a share of 11.1%.

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