BARB: 60% UK homes have SVoD subscription
November 17, 2020
BARB, the UK television audience measurement currency, has released data from its Establishment Survey for Q3 2020.
The data shows that SVoD services continue to reach more UK households. Overall, the number of UK households with an SVoD subscription is now 17 million, up more than 3 million households since Q3 2019. This means that 60 per cent of UK households have access to an SVoD service. Netflix continues to be the largest single service, increasing to 14.8 million households as of Q3 2020.
One reason for the overall increase in the number of households with a subscription to any SVoD service is that, since data were last available in Q1 2020, the number of services available has increased. The largest new arrival is Disney+, which launched in late-March and is available in 3.4 million households as of Q3 2020.
Amazon Prime Video also continues to grow, and has increased by 49 per cent since Q3 2019, to 9.5 million UK households. Its strong rate of growth may be partly attributable to households taking a fresh look at the value of free delivery during lockdown.
Justin Sampson, BARB’s Chief Executive, said: “Understanding the take-up and viewing of SVoD services is high on our priority list. For many years, the Establishment Survey has provided insight into subscription levels; it’s no surprise to see these growing strongly as people have been forced to spend more time at home this year. Next on our to-do list is to report viewing to SVoD services, with or without their involvement. We are making great strides thanks to the installation of meters on the WiFi routers in our panel of homes. Preliminary data show aggregate viewing levels to SVoD and video-sharing platforms, while we plan to augment these with SVoD content ratings in 2021.”
Due to the pandemic and the suspension of face-to-face interviewing, BARB Establishment Survey data were not produced for Q2 2020. The data for Q3 2020 are based on interviews from the resumption of fieldwork in August and September.