North American SVOD market to reach 110m subs in 2021

The North American SVOD market will grow to 109.6 million subscribers by 2021, with multiple subscriptions “key to US SVOD growth”, according to new research.

Digital TV Research’s ‘North America OTT TV and Video Forecasts’ report claims that the number of subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) subscribers will grow by nearly 30 million subs from 81.8 million at the end of 2015.

In the US alone, the research predicts there will be 101 million SVOD subscriptions in 2021, with 25 million of these to be secondary subscriptions – meaning the average US SVOD user will pay for 1.33 subscriptions.

“It is important to stress that these figures are gross – some homes take more than one SVOD platform – especially in the US. We do not believe that 86% of US TV households or even 97% of US fixed broadband households will be SVOD subscribers by 2021,” said Digital TV Research principal analyst, Simon Murray.

US and Canadian SVOD revenues are tipped to climb from US$6.26 billion in 2015 to US$9.16 billion in 2021, with online rentals expected to “continue to suffer as SVOD grows”.

Download-to-own revenues are forecast to grow from US$1.49 billion in 2015 to US$2.5 billion in 2021, while advertising-supported VOD is predicted to become the “main OTT revenue source in 2018”. AVOD revenues will climb from US$5.7 billion in 2015 to US$11.0 billion in 2021, according to the research.

Total OTT TV and video revenues in the US and Canada grew from just US$2.67 billion in 2010 to US$15.39 billion in 2015 and will reach US$24.39 billion in 2015, said Digital TV Research.