UK audience measurement body BARB recently released its first UK TV Landscape Report. The report estimated that 24% of UK households paid for an SVOD platform by end-2015, up from 14% in March 2015.
This gives 6.781 million net SVOD subscribers [counting homes that take one or more SVOD platform as one unit] by end-2015. However, there were 8.165 million gross subscriptions, so the average SVOD home paid for 1.2 subscriptions.
Netflix, the market leader by some distance, had 5.422 million subs at end-2015, up by 1.4 million over the year. Amazon Video followed with 1.766 million subs, up by 0.5 million. Sky’s Now TV was the third largest SVOD platform with 977,000 subs at end-2015, an increase of 300,000 subscribers over the year.
Around 81% of homes (5.495 million) took only one subscription, nearly 18% (1.188 million) had two and 1.4% subscribed to all three (98,000).
About 79% of Netflix subscribers were single subscription homes, compared with only 48% of Amazon subscribers and 39% of Now TV subs. In fact, nearly as many homes took the Netflix and Now combination as standalone Now subs.