NEW YORK—The surging penetration of the internet and smart devices, increasing average internet speeds, and soaring use of video on demand (VOD) services pushed revenues for OTT services to $91.88 billion in 2020, with further growth on the way, P&S Intelligence is predicting. 

Revenues are expected to “surge sharply” during between 2021 and 2030, according to a new report from P&S Intelligence.

The report covers the OTT services market for music streaming, online gaming, and VOD. Of those, P&S predicts that the gaming category is expected to dominate the market during the forecast period.

Over the last year, the pandemic fueled rapid growth in growth of the OTT services market, as lockdowns and stringent social distancing protocols has brought the cinema, theatre industry and live sports to a halt, the report noted. 

The OTT platforms benefited from these measures, as they were able to show sporting events and movies under a pay-per-view model and the lockdowns gave people time to consume online content, boosting viewing. 

Globally, North America held the largest share in the OTT services market in 2020, the report noted but during the forecast period, the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region is predicted to be the fastest-growing market for OTT services, thanks to a large population, growing smartphone user base, and surging internet penetration in the developing countries such as China and India.

ADDISON, Texas—Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime and a handful of other streaming services are household names, but according to a recent study by Parks Associates, there are nearly 300 OTT services currently available in the U.S.

Parks’ recent “OTT Video Market Tracker” covered up through the third quarter of 2020, finding that the number of OTT services has more than doubled since 2014. These services also appear to have a stronger footing in the market, as only six services have ceased operations in 2020, compared to 19 services in 2018.

This growing strength in OTT services certainly can be linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen viewership numbers and streaming hours increase, but as Parks points out, the lack of new movies in theaters is also giving a boost to OTT platforms.

PLUS: More Than 25% of Consumers Added at Least One Streaming Service During Pandemic

While many films, like the next James Bond title, “No Time to Die,” have pushed back their release dates for when theaters hopefully can reopen, other studios, like Disney, have decided to provide their films via their own streaming platforms.

“... Disney’s announcement to move the Pixar film ‘Soul’ to Disney+ shows studios are putting more emphasis on streaming as many theaters remain closed or at limited capacity,” said Steve Nason, research director, Parks Associates. “We could see studios who also own streaming services experiment more with different transactional and windowing options within their offerings, as Disney did with ‘Mulan’ on Disney+ in September.”

Parks Associates also identified the recent partnership between NBC and Roku for Peacock as an example of streaming services’ potential for growth.

For more information, visit www.parksassociates.com.  

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