With new streaming video-on-demand services (SVODs) popping up seemingly all the time, the competition to snag new subscribers is fierce. First-quarter data from Kantar shows that HBO Max is currently leading the pack in this area.
Kanta’s data shows that more than 7% of US households subscribed to a new SVOD in Q1 2021, bringing the number of SVOD subscriptions to 241 million. A separate report from Ampere Analysis indicates a higher number, with the estimated 340 million OTT contracts meaning that there are more streaming video subscriptions than people in the US.
Returning to the Kantar data, of the new subscriptions tracked in Q1, HBO Max accounted for the largest share (14.4%). This is a larger share of new subscriptions than HBO Max claimed in 2020.
Alongside bringing in the largest share of new subscribers, HBO Max has also seen its Net Promoter Score increase considerably since Q2 2020, when the service debuted. Kantar found that HBO Max was the 10th highest service for the customer advocacy rating in the SVOD market in Q2 2020. By Q1 2021, it was in joint-second place. This increase in customer satisfaction is largely due to HBO Max’s deal to show newly-released Warner Brothers’ films simultaneously with their release in cinemas.
Other SVOD services also claimed a fair share of new subscribers. Established SVOD services like Prime Video (13.2%), Disney+ (11.6%) and Hulu (10.6%) all claimed a respectable share of new subscribers. And, while newcomer Paramont+ (a rebranded and expanded version of CBS All Access) acquired 11.8% of new subscribers, Discovery+, which also launched in Q1, only claimed 7.7% of new subscribers during the quarter.
While the average number of SVOD subscriptions per household currently stands at 3.8 (up from 3.3 in Q1 2020), more households are planning to drop some of their subscriptions. Indeed, one-quarter (24.9%) of US households say they plan to cancel at least one of their SVOD subscriptions in the next 3 months (up from 23.2% in Q1 2020).
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