The top pay-TV providers in the US — representing about 92% of the market — shed a record number of subscribers this past year, according to recent data from Leichtman Research Group (LRG). In 2022, pay-TV providers lost about 5.88 million subscribers, compared to a net loss of about 4.7 million in 2021 and 5.12 million in 2020.
With LRG reporting that these pay-TV providers now account for about 70.2 million subscribers, this suggests that they shed about 7.7% of their total subscriber base last year.
When excluding internet-delivered (vMVPD) services, which saw a subscriber increase of 370,000 last year (down from 885,000 in 2021), traditional pay-TV services had a net loss of 6.25 million subscribers last year, up from about 5.85 million in 2021.
When factoring back in vMVPD services, the total amount of subscribers for the top pay-TV providers at the end of 2022 – of 70.2 million – was down from 95.5 million a decade earlier in 2012. That suggests that over the past decade the number of pay-TV subscribers has shrunk by more than one-quarter, or roughly 26.5%.
On the back of these annual accumulating losses, eMarketer forecasts that non-pay-TV households (including cord-nevers and cord-cutters) will outnumber pay-TV households for the first time this year. However, when including vMVPDs in the equation, pay-TV households will continue to outweigh non-pay-TV households at least through 2026.
Meanwhile, concurrent with falling pay-TV subscriptions, separate data from LRG shows that the broadband subscriber market continues to expand. The top broadband companies – representing 95% of the market – added about 3.5 million net subscribers last year, only slightly down from the 3.725 million gain registered in 2021.