BARB: close to seven in 10 UK homes now take SVOD

Almost seven in 10 UK households now subscribe to at least one SVOD service, according to figures published by BARB, the UK’s television audience measurement outfit.

According to figures from the BARB Establishment Survey for Q1 2022, SVOD services were taken by 19.57 million UK homes, or 68.5% of households, at the end of Q1, an increase of almost 500,000 homes since Q4 2021.

The Establishment Survey is designed to enable BARB to understand the characteristics of UK households, part of ensuring that its daily reporting of television audiences is representative of the whole population.

Disney+ and Apple TV+ – the latter a new addition to BARB’s SVOD households tracker this quarter – showed the largest increases in the number of UK homes with access to their services:

Some 6.53 million homes had access to Disney+ in Q1 2022, a quarterly increase of 19% from 5.49 million in Q4 2021.

About 1.57 million homes had access to Apple TV+ in Q1 2022, up 27% from the 1.24 million reported the previous quarter.

Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Now TV saw smaller quarterly gains:, with 17.29 million homes having access to Netflix in Q1 2022, up 3% from 16.79 million the previous quarter.

Some 13.35 million homes had access to Amazon Prime Video, a growth of 6% from 12.57 million in Q4 2021, and 2.13 million homes had Now TV, an increase of 4% from 2.06 million the previous quarter.

The number of UK homes with two or more services now stands at 13.2 million homes or 46.3% of households, up from 12.4 million homes in Q4 2021.