Viewing needs in Great Britain (GB) are increasingly being satisfied by streaming services, according to the latest findings of the data insights consultancy Kantar.
It shows that as of this June there were 16.7 million VOD enabled households in the country, as 57% were subscribed to at least one service. However, only 2.3% of GB SVOD households took out a new subscription in Q2, compared to 7% in the same period last year.
Despite this slowdown, Amazon Prime Video remains in first place, securing over a third of signups, a title it has held for the past five quarters. Netflix nevertheless dominates as the entry level subscription service, with 44% of its new subscribers never having taken out an SVOD service before. Once Netflix adopts new subscribers, they tend to stay loyal. Netflix has the highest length of subscription with 70% of subscribers having the service for more than two years. NOW comes second with 57% and APV sits at 52%. With 77% of VOD enabled households in GB having a Netflix subscription, it continues to be the most significant player in the market. In contrast, after over a year of service, Britbox has only managed to achieve 2% penetration in the market. The main areas of dissatisfaction with Britbox lie in the lack of ability to download content (-15%) and value for money (-16%).
Other findings include Disney+ scoring highest in satisfaction for the variety of classic films (50% vs 29% for Netflix and 21% for Amazon Prime Video and the most popular VOD genre being crime drama.
Significantly, as GB households adopt streaming services this correlates with a decrease in the proportion of households subscribing to cable TV services such as Virgin and Sky, taking a downturn from 42.2% last year to 39.1% in Q2 2021.
