One in three people with streaming subscriptions are sharing their accounts with other households.
Deloitte’s 2023 Digital Consumer Trends research shows one in four users (25%) are sharing the cost of an SVOD platform they use, rising to 34% for 16-24-year-olds;
More than half (57%) of respondents who share a paid SVOD service say they would stop using the service if subscription sharing was banned.
Meanwhile, 21% of consumers say they have cancelled an SVOD service in the last year, with the rising cost of living a driver in cancellations.
Subscription sharing has also become more formalised, with a quarter of users (25%) sharing the cost of an SVOD platform they use with other households. This is also most prolific among younger users, rising to 34% for 16-24 year-olds and 32% for 25-34 year-olds.
Paul Lee, partner and global head of technology, media and telecommunications research at Deloitte said: “Since the birth of subscription-video-on-demand, the sharing of user IDs and passwords with other households has been widespread. As SVOD providers look to implement tighter guidelines around sharing to boost subscriber numbers and revenues, consumers are being faced with the choice of paying more, moving to lower-cost ‘with-ads’ packages, or foregoing their access altogether.”
Lee added that while restrictions on sharing may lead to a growth in subscriptions, it also has the potential to reduce the total number of people viewing a show or film, reducing the degree of buzz around that content, in turn diminishing the overall appeal of a service.
Access to SVOD in the UK has fallen by one percentage point to 73% in 2023 in the last year, having peaked at 76% in 2021. The fall in access was steepest among 65-75-year-olds (to 49% in 2023 from 53% in 2022 and 57% in 2021) whose usage of SVOD had surged during lockdown periods.
However. number of subscriptions per person is still rising, up from 2.46 in 2022 to 2.62 in 2023, an increase of 6.5%. However, this growth is at a much slower pace relative to 2018-2021, when the number of subscriptions per respondent rose 60%, from 1.45 to 2.33.
Source: broadbandtvnews.com
