UK SVOD subscriptions on the rise

The paper, which examines panel data from Barb’s Establishment Survey conducted in the third quarter of 2017, indicates that ‘unmatched viewing’ – i.e. viewing more than 28 days after broadcast and non-broadcast viewing, is increasing, accounting for 16% of TV set activity in 2016.

While Barb can't yet measure actual viewing to SVOD services without their permission, the research found that 30% of unmatched viewing comes from the TV set itself via integrated applications or USB stick plugins, and according to the paper, this is most likely attributable to programming via SVOD services.

The number of households claiming to subscribe to at least one SVOD service, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or Now TV, has grown by a quarter ( 24%) in the last 12 months to 9.5 million homes, the research found.

While Netflix remains the dominant SVOD service in the UK, it grew at the slowest rate over 12 months ( 22%) but attracted the most new subscribers in the year, rising by 1.4 million to reach 7.5 million.

Now TV, meanwhile, experienced the largest annual subscription growth – of 70% – adding 0.6 million subscribers to reach 1.4 million households. Amazon Prime Video grew subscriptions by 51%.

The data also shows an increase in the number of households subscribing to more than one SVOD service. Of the 7.5 million households subscribing to Netflix, 2.3 million also claim they subscribed to Amazon Prime Video. Of all Amazon Prime Video subscribers, 60% of them also subscribed to Netflix.