Most everyone in the United States has a Netflix subscription, or at the very least a Netflix login. However, the pervasiveness of streaming services has been mostly anecdotal, until now. A new report by PwC entitled “Consumer Intelligence Series: I Stream, You Stream” offers hard numbers that detail the rampant success of streaming services in the United States.
The report draws its data from a PwC survey of 1,986 American adults, ages 18 to 59, with annual household incomes above $40,000, conducted by the company in October of 2017. According to the report, 73% of respondents subscribe to a pay TV service: that’s down from 76% last year and 79% the year before. That, however, is fairly predictable and in line with the projections of most experts. What is interesting, is the following statistic: 73% of respondents subscribe to Netflix.
That means that the same number of people who subscribe to a traditional pay TV service, also subscribe to Netflix. This information becomes even more important when you take the time to consider them within the context of the greater trends happening in the space. Pay TV services continue to lose subscribers year-over-year, while streaming services continue to report year-over-year growth. This means that we can expect to see more people subscribing to a streaming service like Netflix than pay for traditional cable services over the next few years.
Obviously the success of streaming services is shaping the television industry, but with the backing of big data like this there is no telling what television is going to look like in the next decade. One thing is for sure, it won’t look like it does today.
Sources:
https://www.pwc.com/us/en/advisory-services/publications/consumer-intelligence-series/video-i-stream-you-stream.html
