Live and linear streaming services provided by OTT players could have at least 60 million subscribers in the US by 2022.
Speaking at the Ottv World Summit, Tony Gunnarson, senior analyst at Ovum, said that his company has termed such services Subscription Linear, or SLIN. They essentially fall into three categories. The first, pay-TV OTT, include Now TV, Sling, Hulu and YouTube TV, while the second (Direct to consumer, or D2C) contained Starz, NHL.TV and NMA League Pass and third games streaming services such as twitch prime and Machinima.
Gunnarson said that SLIN services currently generate a fifth of global OTT video subscriptions and that by 2022 this could rise to a third.
Looking at specific markets outside the US, he added that in the UK there are currently 13 million OTT video subscribers, of which 9 million are SVOD and 4 million SLIN. Meanwhile, in Germany the figures were 7 million (5 million v 2 million) and in France just below 4 million (2.5 million v 1.5 million).
In his summary, Gunnarson asked a number of questions including how will SLIN compete with SVOD and how Netflix respond to the threat from SLIN services?
