North America to add 59 million SVOD subs

London, UK, August 28, 2017--The North American SVOD sector is by far the most mature in the world, with 112 million SVOD subscribers to movie and TV episode platforms by end-2016. However, there is plenty of growth left in the sector. The SVOD total is forecast to climb to 171 million by 2022 – up by 59 million on 2016 or by 53% according to Digital TV Research.

Simon Murray, Principal Analyst at Digital TV Research, said: “It is important to stress that these figures are gross – many homes take more than one SVOD platform, especially in the US. That explains why we forecast 132% SVOD penetration of US TV households by 2022.”

Digital TV Research forecasts that 70.3% of US TV households (85 million) will subscribe to at least one SVOD platform by 2022. The average SVOD household will pay for 1.88 SVOD platforms. This compares to 60.3% of TV households (70 million) TV households subscribing to at least one SVOD platform by end-2016. The average SVOD subscriber paid for 1.5 SVOD platforms at end-2016. Therefore, SVOD penetration growth of TV households will slow considerably, but SVOD homes will buy more services. 

The North America OTT TV & Video Forecasts report concludes that most of the dual SVOD subscriptions will be for Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. 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 7 million in Canada (up by 26% on 2016).