Virgin Media customers with Netflix ‘happier and more loyal’

Virgin Media customers who adopt Netflix via the Virgin Media platform are happier and more loyal than subscribers who don’t take up the SVOD service, and the cable operator’s customers are more likely to subscribe to Netflix than non-customers, according to research by the Liberty Global-owned company.

While UK households’ adoption of Netflix stands at around 32%, some 43% of Virgin Media’s customers had subscribed to Netflix between Q1 2017 and Q1 2018.

Sara Sheridan, director of consumer insight and global analytics at Liberty Global, revealing the findings at the OTT TV World Summit in London yesterday, said that adoption of Netflix among Virgin Media customers had “shot up” following the launch of the advanced V6 set-top box, which includes direct access to the streaming service. She said that Netflix subscribers were “happier and more willing to stay” with Virgin.

Sheridan said that Netflix increased in popularity among Virgin Media subscribers in the year following the launch of the V6, moving from number six to number five in consumers’ rankings of services on the platform.

Sheridan said that while among early adopters take-up of Netflix had some negative knock-on effect on use of other services on the platform, this was not the case with more recent sign-ups. Amon g this group, Netflix viewing was “additive to linear and catch-up”, she said.

Sheridan said that ‘heavy’ and ‘regular’ users of Netflix had grown as significantly in number over the survey period, while binge-viewers had declined slightly and ‘light’ users had declined significantly.