The UK’s streaming market continues to be impacted by the cost of living crisis, with figures from Kantar revealing that almost one million households have cancelled streaming services so far this year.
According to Kantar, from July to September 2022, the number of VoD-enabled households that subscribed to at least one video streaming service in Great Britain fell to 16.18 million, down 234,000 quarter on quarter.
The drop of 215,000 in Q1 and 488,000 in Q2 means 937,000 households have unsubscribed from a streaming service so far this year.
Kantar’s figures also reveal almost half of churned Netflix subscribers have dropped out of the SVoD category altogether.
However, it’s not all doom and gloom, found Kantar. Despite overall VoD penetration falling slightly, the total number of SVoD subscriptions in GB rose to 28.2million, a rise of 108,000 compared to Q2.
Commenting on the research, Dominic Sunnebo, global insight director, Kantar, Worldpanel Division said: “There are a number of dynamics at play in the market, such as the cost of living crisis and subsequent ‘cord-cutting’, as well as a degree of ‘content fatigue’, experienced by some VoD viewers, which has resulted in an overall drop in household SVoD penetration.
“Netflix accounted for just under 1 in 4 SVoD churners in the latest quarter, but what’s key here is that 45 per cent of these Netflix churners dropped out of the SVoD market altogether,” added Sunnebo. “Data indicates that viewers did not switch to a competitor, or use a secondary streaming subscription; rather, they left the SVoD market altogether, reverting back to either pay-TV or linear TV.”
