ITVX premium, Apple TV+ defy UK streaming market cull
Details
Editor
| 20 April 2023
The latest Kantar Entertainment on Demand (EoD) study on British streaming habits from January to March 2023has found a quarterly fall in the number of video-on-demand (VOD)-enabled households that subscribed to at least one video streaming service.



Specifically, Kantar’s EoD study found that at the end of 2022, UK consumers planned to scale back their video streaming subscriptions in Q1’23 and this played out, with 144,000 households dropping out of the VOD sector altogether and a net loss of 167,000 subscriptions.

In all, revealed that the total number of video streaming services being subscribed to by British households fell by 167,000 in the quarter to 29.44 million, with Netflix seeing the largest absolute losses in subscriber numbers. In addition, the number of UK VOD households fell to 16.10 million, down 144,000, quarter on quarter, representing 55% of households. This compared with 16.91million in Q1’22, and 16.95 million in Q1’21.

After the post-Christmas cull of subscriptions in Q1’23, the second quarter of the year looks to be more stable, with planned video cancellations dropping to 6.8% of subscription holders, a fall both year on year and quarter on quarter.
While 7% of households cancelled at least one subscription as part of their post-Christmas ‘subscription cull’4% of British households took out at least one new streaming subscription in the first quarter of the year, up from 3% a year earlier.

However, some services were more heavily impacted by this trend than others, with Prime Video showing resilience. Kantar suggested that Amazon’s ecosystem strategy protects Prime from the post-Christmas Cull.
“It’s often the case that consumers take out Prime Membership with Amazon in Q4 for the fast and free delivery service and at the same time utilise the Prime Video service for entertainment over the Christmas holidays, before cutting back the next quarter,” explained Dominic Sunnebo, global insight director, Kantar, Worldpanel Division.

“However, whilst Prime membership did drop back in Q1, the drop was limited to just a 1%-point drop, significantly lower than seen during the same period a year ago and importantly engagement with Prime Video among loyal Prime Members actually increased in Q1’23. The release of Clarkson’s Farm during the quarter played a key role in engaging Prime Video subscribers, with the title the #2 most enjoyed across all SVOD platforms during Q1’23. Amazon’s investment in Sport also played an important role, with sporting content driving one out of every three new subscribers to Prime Video in the quarter.”

The data also showed that AppleTV+ had a strong first quarter to 2023, seeing the second fastest growth in absolute subscriber numbers vs. the previous quarter, only beaten by newly launched ITVX premium. AppleTV+ took #4 spot in terms of share of new subscribers over the quarter, with Slow Horses, an MI5 spy-based drama, a top title driving new subscriber acquisition.

ITVX, and ITVX premium a relaunched service from ITV, replacing its existing ITVHub and ITVHub+ offering, had an impressive first quarter showing. ITVX noted a jump in weekly users in Q1’23 vs ITVHub in Q4’22, along with ITVX premium gaining 5% of new SVOD subscribers in the quarter with the incorporation of BritBox content. As well as the variety of TV shows, the ability to watch shows without adverts was a key attraction to ITVX premium subscribers, cited by 28% as a key reason for signing up.

By contrast, Netflix was hurting from consumers looking to save money. Kantar observed that the launch of a cheaper ad supported price tier has helped Netflix see a small pick-up in share of new subscribers. However, Kantar noted that increased cancellations as its subscribers look for ways to save money diluted any significant benefit in terms of total subscriber numbers.