Nearly 3M Pay-TV Subscribers Cut Service In 2018, Double 2017 Total
Nearly 3M Pay-TV Subscribers Cut Service In 2018, Double
2017 Total – Study
by Dade Hayes March 6, 2019 7:14am
The pace of cord-cutting accelerated in 2018, with the
largest pay-TV providers shedding about 2.9 million video subscribers, nearly
double the 1.5 million subscriber losses in 2017, according to the latest study
by Leichtman Research Group.
The research firm, which tracks providers covering about
95% of the market, found that gains from virtual MVPD services (aka “skinny
bundles”) are not making up for the conventional subscriber losses. That
indicates that a growing number of viewers are doing without pay-TV altogether,
presumably in favor of lower-cost subscription services like Netflix, Hulu or
Amazon Prime Video.
Satellite distributors DirecTV and Dish Network suffered
the bulk of the losses, a collective 2.36 million in 2018, up from 1.55 million
in 2017.
Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for
Leichtman Research Group, said net pay-TV losses since the peak year of 2012
have totaled about 10 million, which has been offset by growth in
internet-delivered, “skinny” TV packages. Even so, the total subscriber number
is still significantly in the red.
Prominent skinny bundles DirecTV Now and Sling TV posted
six-figure subscriber gains for the year and now have more than 4 million
subscribers between them, but their rate of growth slowed to 19% in 2018 from
90% in 2017. Rival skinny bundles YouTube TV, Hulu with Live TV and PlayStation
Vue do not publicly report subscriber numbers in the way that conventional
distributors do, so Leichtman does not include them in its tally.
Even when those others are added to DirecTV Now and
Sling, based on recent estimates from Wall Street analysts and other reports,
all U.S. skinny bundles together have between 7 million and 8 million
subscribers. That tally is less than 10% of the 89.1 million pay-TV homes in
the U.S. (The last time the total pay-TV universe has been this small, on a
pro-forma basis, was 2007.)
Recent quarterly financial reports have offered an
unsettling snapshot of skinny bundles, particularly at DirecTV parent AT&T.
The company has chalked up recent subscriber losses at DirecTV Now to the
expiration of an aggressive set of promotional discounts, as well as the recent
decision to raise prices.
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