While the movement away from traditional multichannel video services will accelerate only slightly in the next few months, the decline will accelerate significantly moving forward, according to a multichannel subscriptions forecast from Kagan, a media research group within S&P Global Market Intelligence. Total traditional multichannel subscriptions (including residential and commercial) will fall 16.4 million to 73.6 million by 2023, researchers said.
Consumers continue to move to less expensive over-the-top (OTT) services, though many will stay with some traditional pay television for some time, despite rising prices. A series of price hikes have impacted subscriber growth in the virtual multichannel space, according to the research firm.
Kagan notes that shifting content rights, where exclusive content is no longer the domain of traditional pay-TV is also impacting consumer behavior to cut the cord.
The combined households relying on traditional and virtual multichannel services for video entertainment are still expected to account for the majority of occupied homes through 2023 with 64% of the market, according to the Kagan report.
Other predictions for 2023 rom the multichannel subscriptions forecast:
- Traditional residential multichannel households (excluding commercial and overlap) down 15.6 million to 70.5 million
- Virtual multichannel households up 6.4 million to 13.5 million
- Combined traditional and virtual multichannel down to 84 million residential subscribers
- Online video-only households up 10.6 million to 25.2 million
- Over-the-air (OTA) up 3.8 million to 21 million
We recently reported that more than half of Americans stream over-the-top (OTT) services, according to new OTT video market research from OpenX and The Harris Poll. OTT video is used by 52% of all respondents, including 65% of those in the 18- to 34-year old age bracket. Seventy percent watch in bed, 30% while on vacation, 21% at their work desk and 30% in the bathroom. The survey found that 15% of OTT users watch no live television and most OTT users watch more of it than traditional television daily.
