As the Top 10 service providers lose 212,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2018, the informitv’s Multiscreen Index has found that it’s online television services that are picking up the slack.
Among the top 10 services there were 373,000 fewer satellite subscribers and 245,000 fewer cable television customers. Meanwhile online television services DIRECTV NOW and Sling TV gained a total of 427,000 customers, resulting in an overall loss of 0.25% of the subscriber base across the top 10 services.
DIRECTV and DISH Network lost 188,000 and 185,000 satellite subscribers respectively, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. DIRECTV NOW added 336,000 online subscribers, taking its total to 1.42 million, giving AT&T an overall net gain of 149,000, with 25.32 million subscribers across its services in the United States and DISH added 91,000 Sling customers. Sling now has 2.30 million online television customers, making it the eighth largest television service in the country, just behind Optimum cable.
“The DIRECTV NOW and Sling TV online services are continuing to gain customers at the expense of traditional television platforms,” observed Dr William Cooper, the editor of the informitv Multiscreen Index. “We now include them as distinct services in our index and they are now among the top 10 in the United States, above some of the smaller cable services.”
The top 10 services for the United States in the Multiscreen Index have just over 84 million television customers between them, accounting for over 70% of television homes. Subscriber numbers are as reported by service providers, rather than analyst estimates.
