In recent years, the growth of Premium SVOD services has been outpaced by Non-Premium SVOD Services, which includes Specialty and Sports SVOD and vMVPDs. Antenna estimates there were 339M US streaming video subscriptions at the close of Q2’25, and while the majority of subscriptions are still with Premium SVOD services, about 20% are for Specialty SVOD, Sports SVOD, and vMVPDs.
Consumer needs are not monolithic, so more targeted services that resonate with passionate communities – for example, genre, fandom, and language-specific offerings – remain important to the health of the overall industry. But as the streaming market continues to mature, these categories may now be facing the same growth slowdown that Premium SVOD services faced a few years ago.
Specialty SVOD continues to be the fastest-growing segment of the market, up 12% YoY, according to Antenna estimates for Q2’25, while Premium SVOD is up 10% YoY. But the category is experiencing some deceleration; in Q2’24, Specialty SVOD had a growth rate of 22% YoY, compared to 11% YoY for Premium SVOD.
Sports SVOD subscriptions are essentially flat, but Antenna observes the core league services, such as MLS Season Pass, NFL Sunday Ticket, and NBA League Pass, are still growing. Most of the decline in the Sports category has come from ESPN+, and specifically from Disney placing greater marketing emphasis on the Disney Duo bundle, which only includes Disney+ and Hulu, over the Trio bundle. Of course, the real test for the Sports category will be in the coming weeks with the launch of the ESPN and Fox ONE streaming services ahead of the 2025/2026 football season.
Antenna estimates the growth of vMVPDs like YouTubeTV, Fubo and Sling at 5% YoY at the end of Q2’25, which is slower than the 15% YoY growth rate observed in Q2’24. vMVPDs, too, are at a major transformational moment, as the launch of ESPN and Fox’s streaming services will mean that essentially all of the major sports programming available in traditional pay TV packages are now also available via streamers.
While growth has moderated from the earliest years of the shift to streaming, the double-digit expansion in 2024 and into 2025 demonstrates that the market is still far from saturated. We’ll have in-depth analysis to share around the trends for Specialty, Sports, and vMPVDs in the upcoming State of Subscriptions, so be sure you’re signed up for our mailing list to receive your own copy.
For more detailed information on Antenna’s methodology and definitions of core metrics, please visit http://www.antenna.live/methodology.
* Premium SVOD includes 9 services: Apple TV+, Discovery+, Disney+, Hulu, Max, Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock, and Starz. Specialty SVOD includes 24 services: A&E Crime Central*, Acorn TV, ALLBLK*, AMC+*, BBC Select, BET+, BritBox, Cinemax, Crunchyroll*, CuriosityStream*, Gaia*, Hallmark Movies Now*, History Vault*, Lifetime Movie Club*, MGM+*, PBS Documentaries, PBS KIDS, PBS Masterpiece, PureFlix*, Shudder*, Sundance Now*, UP Faith & Family*, ViX Premium* and Zeus Network* (*denotes that Direct distribution is not covered). Sports includes 9 services: DAZN, ESPN+, FanDuel Sports Network, MLB TV*, MLS Season Pass, NBA League Pass*, NFL Sunday Ticket, NFL+, UFC Fight Pass (*denotes that Direct distribution is not covered). vMVPD includes 5 services: DIRECTV STREAM, Hulu + Live TV, Philo, Sling TV, YouTube TV.
