Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) services can for the first time be found in the majority of UK households.
The Viewing Report, published Tuesday by audience researchers BARB, found that between Q4 2015 and Q4 2019, the number of homes with a subscription to at least one of Netflix, Amazon and Now TV has more than doubled. Of these SVOD-subscribing homes, just over 42% now take more than one service, with Netflix and Amazon the most popular combination. This has increased from 9% of SVOD homes in Q4 2015 to almost one in three in Q4 2019.
Overall, 14.3 million UK households had one of these SVOD services, an increase of 2.0 million homes (16%), compared with Q4 2018.
As with five years ago the streaming services skew heavily towards the young, but there has been significant growth among older audiences, particularly in the 55 to 74 age bracket.
BARB can’t yet identify SVOD viewing, but the researcher notes there has been an increase in the amount of unidentified viewing – under which SVOD would fall – ahead of any single BARB reported channel in the 9pm slot.
There were 110 such days in 2019, almost double the figure for 2018.
