Kagan: SVOD supplementary to pay TV

TV households in Europe are primarily adopting online subscription video-on-demand services as a supplementary form of video entertainment, rather than a replacement for pay TV.

This is according to research by Kagan, the telecoms media and technology research arm of S&P Global Market Intelligence, which claims that the overall percentage of cord cutters in Western Europe is flat or declining – indicating that people are not dropping pay TV in favour of SVOD.

The Western Europe SVOD report said that between 2015 and 2017, the use of SVOD services among internet households climbed: from 49% to 56% in the UK; from 41% to 44% in Germany; and from 34% to 35% in France.

“Comparing historical data over the past two years shows that the level of non-multichannel TV households in the UK and Germany has remained essentially flat within the statistical margin of error,” according to the report.

“Data from the France surveys shows a 7-percentage point increase over 2015 and 2016 levels. However, none of the three countries exhibit the steady increase in non-multichannel TV households typically associated with a video cord-cutting trend.”

The report said that there is evidence to suggest that the small growth in non-multichannel TV households over the past two years is largely due to increased numbers of video ‘cord-nevers’. Between 2015 and 2017 it said that the number of cord-nevers had increased by 7 percentage points in Germany, 2 percentage points in the UK and remained unchanged in France.