Broadband booms as major US pay-TV firms lose over 1.2MN subs in Q2
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Editor
| 18 August 2021
Two back-to-back studies from the Leichtman Research Group (LRG) have highlighted clearly contrasting fortunes in the second quarter 2021 of the declining pay-TV industry in the US and the country’s broadband sector which is very much in continued rude health.
Qwest TV Xfinity 2 JUne 2021
Even though on the upside the number of pay-TV net losses were about 275,000 fewer than those recorded in Q2 2020, LRG still found that the largest pay-TV providers in the US, representing about 95% of the market, lost about 1,230,000 net video subscribers in quarter.

The top pay-TV providers in the country now account for about 77.6 million subscribers. The top seven cable companies were found to have 42.6 million video subscribers, other traditional pay-TV services having about 28.2 million subscribers, and the top publicly reporting Internet-delivered (vMVPD) pay-TV services accounted about 6.8 million subscribers.

Yet drilling down to highlight trends, the study found that top cable providers had a net loss of about 590,000 video subscribers in Q2 2021, compared with a loss of about 505,000 subscribers in the same quarter of 2020. At the end of the quarter, cable giant Comcast reported 18.956 pay-TV subs, 399,000 fewer than a year ago.

Other traditional pay-TV services had a net loss of about 700,000 subscribers in Q2 2021 – compared to a loss of about 1,045,000 subscribers a year earlier. In the telco TV sector, AT&T Premium TV had 473,000 net losses in Q2 2021, compared with 887,000 net losses a year ago. The leading vMVPDs added about 55,000 subscribers in the second quarter of compared to a gain of about 45,000 over the course of twelve months.

Over the past year, top pay-TV providers had a net loss of about 4,520,000 subscribers, compared with a loss of about 5,460,000 over the prior year. By stark contrast, the leading US broadband providers have added 8 million subscribers over the past two years to the end of the second quarter of 2021.

LRG found that the largest cable and wireline phone providers in the US, representing about 96% of the market, acquired about 890,000 net additional broadband Internet subscribers in 2Q 2021, actually down on the gain of about 1.260 million subscribers in Q2 2020. The study also revealed that the top broadband providers now account for about 107.4 million subscribers, with top cable companies having about 74.7 million broadband subscribers, and top wireline phone companies having about 32.7 million subscribers.