8.19.22
Aluma estimates U.S. pay-TV providers lost 1.57 million subscribers in the second quarter of 2022, up from 1.26 million in second quarter.
- Cable MVPDs lost almost one million subscribers during this time, declining from 42.4M to 41.3M, a loss of 2.3% of its video base. Comcast accounted for 54% of this loss, down 520K subscribers in the second quarter.
- Satellite and telco MVPDs lost .71 million subscribers, declining from 26.6M to 24.9M, a loss of 2.7% of its video base. DirecTV + U-verse accounted for 350K lost subscribers, Dish Network 230K. (U-verse no longer sells services and existing customers are being transitioned to app-based DirecTV Stream.)
- Virtual MVPDs actually added 100,000 subscribers in second quarter, up from 13.4M in Q1.22 to 13.5M in Q2.22, due almost entirely to YouTube TV reporting it exceeded 5M subscribers in Q2.22, up from the last report of more than 3M in Q2.20.
Unlike other subscription tabulations, Aluma includes estimates for those companies that do not publicly release such information, then we update those counts when we get a peak behind the curtain. For example, YouTube TV keeps its sub counts secret but selectively leaks them every now and then to keep us honest. Google recently acknowledge that, as of second quarter, it had more than 5M YouTube TV subscriptions, so we recalibrated its count history from the date of its last public announcement in October 2020. Accordingly, we estimate the service adding 400,000 subscribers in second quarter of this year. This is largely responsible for the virtual pay-TV subscriptions increasing by 100,000, versus a decline as many have reported. (When you’re given lemons, you make lemonade.)
Legacy operators |
Q2.22 |
Q1.22 |
+/- change |
|
| Comcast | 17.14 | 17.66 | -0.52 | |
| Charter | 15.50 | 15.72 | -0.23 | |
| Cox | 3.30 | 3.35 | -0.05 | |
| Altice | 2.57 | 2.66 | -0.08 | |
| Mediacom | 0.54 | 0.55 | -0.02 | |
| Breezeline | 0.33 | 0.34 | -0.01 | |
| Cable ONE | 0.22 | 0.24 | -0.02 | |
| Wide Open West | 0.14 | 0.14 | -0.01 | |
| Other cable | 1.65 | 1.69 | -0.04 | |
| Total cable | 41.39 | 42.36 | -0.972 | |
| DirectTV + Uverse | 13.85 | 14.25 | -0.40 | |
| Dish Networks | 7.79 | 7.99 | -0.20 | |
| Verizon Fios | 3.41 | 3.50 | -0.09 | |
| Frontier | 0.34 | 0.35 | -0.01 | |
| Other telco | 0.51 | 0.52 | -0.01 | |
| Total DBS & telco | 25.90 | 26.61 | -0.71 | |
| Total legacy | 67.29 | 68.97 | -1.70 | |
Virtual operators |
Q2.22 |
Q1.22 |
+/- change |
|
| Sling TV | 2.20 | 2.30 | -0.05 | |
| DirecTV Stream (estimate) | 0.42 | 0.46 | -0.04 | |
| Hulu Live TV | 4.00 | 4.10 | -0.10 | |
| YouTube TV (Q1.22 estimate) | 5.00 | 4.60 | 0.40 | |
| Fubo | 0.95 | 1.06 | -0.11 | |
| Philo (estimate) | 0.77 | 0.78 | -0.01 | |
| Other (estimate) | 0.18 | 0.17 | 0.01 | |
| Total virtual | 13.51 | 13.42 | 0.10 | |
| TOTAL U.S. PAY-TV SUBSCRIBERS | 80.80 | 82.38 | -1.58 | |
| © Aluma Insights 2022 | ||||