The number of homes in the UK with at least one pay-as-you-go service fell by 215,000 in the first quarter – ending a decade of almost uninterrupted growth in the popularity of streaming services – as households cut their budgets to cope with inflation. three – high decade. “With so many streaming services experiencing significant revenue growth during Covid’s heyday, this time will be disappointing,” said Dominic Sunnebo, director of global information at Kantar Worldpanel, publisher of Entertainment on Demand. “Evidence from these findings suggests that British households are now cautiously looking for ways to save, and the on-demand pay-per-view (SVoD) market is already seeing results.” The unprecedented number of streaming services now on the market, at a time when living standards are projected to plummet since the 1950s, means that the increased home entertainment budgets that were sacred during pandemic quarantine are now available. cut. The Kantar Worldpanel report found that 16.9 million households in the UK had at least one subscription service – although the average is 2.4 – at the end of the first quarter. While there were 1.29 million new subscriptions to SVoD services in the UK in the first three months, this was offset by 1.51 million cancellations, with more than half a million of them attributed to “savings”. The cut in flow budgets looks set to increase, with the percentage of consumers planning to cancel at least one SVoD saying “they want to save money” reaching a record high of 38%. “In times of financial uncertainty, services need to be essential in the minds of subscribers,” Sunnebo said. “As a result, it is now more critical than ever for SVoD providers to show consumers how their services are needed at home in a highly competitive market.” The Prime Video series, Reacher and the Netflix dramas, Ozark and Inventing Anna, proved to be the most popular SVoD shows in the UK in the first quarter. In contrast, Disney +, the third largest service in the world, saw its rollover rate (the rate at which customers canceled subscriptions) triple in a quarter to 12%. Sky’s Now TV, Discovery + and BritBox, the joint venture between ITV and the BBC, also saw “significant jumps” in reversal rates in the quarter. Subscribe to the daily Business Today email or follow the Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk However, even the largest streaming service in the world, which on Tuesday will report its first quarter results and provide information on market power in the coming months, is feeling the pressure of the slowdown following the pandemic. In January, Netflix predicted it would add just 2.5 million new subscribers worldwide in the first quarter, the worst start to a year in more than a decade, and confirming that 2021 added the fewest subscribers since 2015. Last year, Netflix attracted the lowest number of new subscribers in the UK since launch in 2012.
