US homes twice as likely to take OTT TV plus pay TV as OTT alone

Twice as many US households subscribe to both pay TV and OTT TV services as those who subscribe only to OTT service such as Netlfix, according to research commissioned by subscriber management specialist Paywizard.

According to the research, based on a survey of 1,000 US consumers, 21% of households only subscribe to OTT services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime or Hulu as their sole pay-TV package – indicating cord-cutting and new younger users are starting out with OTT subscriptions.

However, 41% take both OTT and traditional pay TV services.

The Paywizard report, Show the Love with Customer Experiene, found that 31% of households increased their overall TV and entertainment spend when they added a pay-OTT subscription in the previous 12 months, while just 17% decreased spend as a result of adding a new online TV service.  According to the findings, 43% of US households plan to add a new pay TV subscription – whether cable, satellite, IPTV or OTT – in the next six months.

The study found that 92% of US homes have some sort of pay TV subscription, with 71% taking a traditional cable, satellite or IPTV service and 62% taking an OTT TV service.

Some 25% of survey respondents had cancelled a pay OTT TV service over the previous 12 months due to poor customer experience, according to Paywizard.

Paywizard’s study found that consumers were frequently dissatisfied with the customer experience on offer. Some 30% of US households with a pay TV service experienced a negative interaction or issue with at least one of their TV service providers within the previous 12 months, with 42% of those people cancelling their service.

“Cord cutting continues to be a major concern for the US cable and satellite TV industry and our latest research shows that it is definitely having an impact on these services. But the survey also reveals that those subscribers we’ve dubbed ‘pay TV polygamists’ are emerging as a major force that runs counter to the OTT-only trend,” said Bhavesh Vaghela, Paywizard’s CEO.

“The US is the most advanced TV market in the world with high pay TV adoption and the research signals that there is a real opportunity for operators to prevent cord-cutting and win over new subscribers, as the figures also show consumers are willing to spend more overall on pay TV if the customer relationships are managed effectively.”