SVOD Stacking on the Rise

New research from Parks Associates has found that in the third quarter, 61 percent of U.S. broadband homes used two or more OTT services, up from 48 percent in the previous year, while 45 percent had three or more, up from 27 percent.

About 31 percent of homes had four or more services, up from 14 percent, according to Parks Associates’ The Next ‘Big 3’ in OTT.

“The term ‘streaming wars’ has been used for the past several years to describe the battle between high-profile SVOD services to capture revenue and viewership among U.S. video consumers,” said Steve Nason, research director at Parks Associates. “So far the main battle has been among the Big 3: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu, with other services primarily acting as complements. Now other services from major players are vying to become a core video service in U.S. households, which represents the first real threat to the hierarchy established by the Big 3.”

Nason continued, “Clearly, the five main challengers to the Big 3 are having a direct impact on the service stack of OTT consumers. These services are primarily responsible for building up the OTT video portfolio by filling in important content gaps not currently being delivered by the Big 3 and other services. As these challengers continue to be more fully integrated into the market, their impact on the video consumer service stack will continue to grow.”