Analysts have flooded the market with reports and perspectives foretelling the arrival of the streaming wars. Serving as the industry’s own “winter is coming” mantra -- à la Game of Thrones -- the streaming wars were portrayed as a great competition for discrete household content budgets. 

Revenue in the Video Streaming (SVoD) segment currenlty amounts to US $25,894m in 2020 and is expected to grow at an annual rate (CAGR 2020-2024) of 4.1%, resulting in a market volume of US$30,410m by 2024 according to a new report from Statista analyzing the global Video Streaming (SVoD) market.

Disney+’s rollout has been one of the most discussed and debated content service launches ever. Futuresource is bullish about its prospects in most key markets, with it expected to challenge for the number two or three SVoD position behind Netflix and (where significant) Amazon Prime Video. The depth of content at launch is impressive, with approximately 600 movies and TV show franchises, providing a long tail of Disney content unmatched on existing services and with strong appeal to families. Futuresource estimates that around two-thirds of Disney+ subscribers will have children under 12, with this base crucial in helping maintain overall subscriber loyalty to the service across the long term.

Parks Associates research finds that the percentage of households with multiple OTT subscriptions has increased by 130% since 2014. In 2019, forty-six percent of US broadband households subscribe to two or more OTT services. According to a new report, “Partnering, Aggregation, and Bundling in Video Services” only 33% subscribed to multiple services in early 2017 and 20% in 2014.

The Denmark video market continues to progress strongly, with total spend growing by 7% in 2018 to DKK 10.21 billion (US$1.53 billion), with SVoD driving growth. This has been supported by steady growth in the transactional digital market and robust EST growth, according to the latest video insights market report from Futuresource Consulting.

Rethink TV, the TV research arm of Rethink Technology Research has released a forecast of the video revenues for four of the world’s largest pay TV and studio groupings, and finds that the only one that will have rock steady, uninterrupted growth is Netflix.

Apple has given the strong impression that the launch of a new SVoD service will be part of the company’s first 2019 event this March 25th in a move that has been widely anticipated across the video and TV market for years, according to Futuresource Consulting.

Household spending on subscription OTT video services has held steady for three years, averaging just under $8 per month since 2016 according to Parks Associates’ OTT Video Research. Given the growing adoption of OTT video services over the past three years, these figures suggest that adoption of multiple services or expensive services by some consumers is offset by a larger base of consumers who either subscribe to one or two relatively inexpensive services, including 30 percent of consumers who do not spend any money on OTT video services.

QoE video analytics is growing into an arms race to build third party tools, which allow all pay TV players and many free to air broadcasters, to behave more like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, according to a new Rethink Research report.

Digital pay TV subscriptions around the world, including cable, satellite and IPTV, exceeded one billion for the first time in 2017, according to new research from IHS Markit. This global growth comes despite the continued uptake of over-the-top (OTT) subscription video services, like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video, which added more than three times the number of subscriptions than pay TV last year, according to IHS Markit.  

Parks Associates has released its updated list of the top 10 subscription over-the-top (OTT) video services in the U.S. market, based on number of subscribers -- and Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu continue to hold the top three slots.  Meanwhile, HBO Now made a significant move into the top five.