Antenna Insights On The Subscription Economy

Recent Antenna data shows that growth in the Premium SVOD category continued to moderate in the first quarter of 2024. Overall, there were 45.5M Gross Additions and 41.3M Cancels to Premium SVOD services in Q1’24, resulting in 4.1M Net Additions.

As we noted in the most recent Antenna State of Subscriptions Report, Serial Churners–individuals who have canceled three or more Premium SVOD services in the past two years–are a growing and active cohort of U.S. streaming subscribers. According to Antenna data, at the end of 2023 nearly one-in-four streaming consumers qualified as Serial Churners, an increase of 42% YoY.

The first two months of 2024 brought some big moments for streaming and sports: in January, Peacock’s exclusive broadcast of the NFL AFC Wild Card Game and Paramount+’s broadcast of Super Bowl LVIII.

One of the topics we unpack in the most recent Antenna State of Subscriptions Report is the concept of subscription tenure–how long a user has been subscribed to a given service–and its implications. While it’s still early days in the shift to streaming, there are a wealth of insights to be gleaned from tenure data.

Last week, we released the latest Antenna State of Subscriptions Report and said the streaming video industry has entered a new phase that requires services to engage in more advanced subscriber management. One area of opportunity for streamers: win-backs.

The headlines suggesting that the boom times are over for streaming video have been unavoidable.

We know that live sports programming can be a big draw for attracting consumers to streaming services, and Antenna data has shown that certain sports-motivated subscribers can be more loyal than the average subscriber. So with Super Bowl LVIII set for this weekend, we wanted to know how well the various services that have carried “the Big Game” have done retaining their respective cohorts of Super Bowl subscribers. 

NBCUniversal and the NFL certainly turned heads when they announced the AFC Wild Card Game would be available exclusively on Peacock. NBCUniversal has stated that the January 13 matchup between Kansas City and Miami was the biggest live-streamed event in U.S. history and drove internet usage in a single day in the U.S. to a new record. But did it also drive subscriber growth to record levels?

While the market for subscription streaming video continues to evolve, November 2023 marked an important milestone: it was the first month we observed the majority of sign-ups for Premium SVOD services going to ad-supported plans.