Even though it is by far the most mature market of its kind, there is plenty of growth left in the North American subscription video on-demand (SVOD) market, according to a report from Digital TV Research.
The analyst calculates that the US SVOD arena will grow from 112 million subscribers at the end of 2016 to 171 million by 2022, representing 53% growth. This would also mean that 70.3% of US TV households (85 million) will be subscribing to at least one SVOD platform by this time. Digital TV Research also found that average SVOD household will pay for 1.88 SVOD platforms, compared with 60.3% of TV households (70 million) TV households subscribing to at least one SVOD platform by the end of 2016. The data found that the average SVOD subscriber paid for 1.5 SVOD platforms by December 2016.Most of the dual SVOD subscriptions will be for Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. The report forecast that these two platforms will account for 72.5% of the North America’s SVOD subscribers by 2022 – down from 78.6% in 2017.Netflix will have 59 million subscribers in the US by 2022 (up by 11 million or 23% on end-2016) and seven million in Canada (up by 26% on 2016).
Digital TV Research says that while SVOD penetration growth of TV households will slow considerably, SVOD homes will buy more services. “It is important to stress that these figures are gross – many homes take more than one SVOD platform, especially in the US,” said Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV Research and author of the North America OTT TV & Video Forecasts report. “That explains why we forecast 132% SVOD penetration of US TV households by 2022.”
