CAMBRIDGE, U.K.— New research commissioned by Bango, a U.K.-based provider of subscription bundling platforms, finds that 43% of Americans would switch their mobile, broadband, or TV provider for a better sports streaming bundle, putting more than four in ten customers up for grabs.

That churn risk is the clearest signal yet that sports has become a frontline battleground for telcos fighting for customers. With sports rights fragmented across streaming platforms, telco providers are becoming a trusted way for consumers to consolidate sports content, according to Bango, which cites that more than half (52%) say they would trust their own provider above anyone else to pull all the live sports they care about into a single bundle.

This fragmentation is on full display right now. To follow the 2026 World Cup in the US, English-language viewers are split across Fox and FS1, subscription service Fox One, and free ad-supported Tubi, while Spanish-language coverage runs on Telemundo and streams on Peacock. Even the biggest event in world sport has fans hopping between apps and subscriptions to follow a single tournament: exactly the kind of confusion consumers are looking to their telco to solve, Bango said.

The findings also indicate that sports content now influences telco choice nearly as much as price, with 45% of respondents preferring a provider with a strong sports streaming bundle over one with a lower monthly price. In fact, 42% would pay more to their current provider if it included the sports they care about, according to Bango.

Sports bundles are also a strong driver of loyalty and growth; 46% of Americans say a sports streaming bundle would make them more loyal to their current provider, and 49% say it would be more likely to recommend them. On the other hand, if telcos remove access to sports, 48% of Americans would then consider switching to a competitor.

Bango notes that these findings highlight an ongoing shift in the telco sector, with providers moving beyond connectivity to bundle the subscriptions consumers value most.

“Just like on the field, telcos can win or lose with sport, and the numbers make that impossible to ignore,” said Giles Tongue, subscription expert at Bango. “More than four in ten Americans would switch telco for a better sports bundle, and almost as many would walk if their provider lost access to the sports they love. Connectivity alone has never held that kind of power over customer choice.”

"This is the clearest commercial signal telcos will get. Sports rights are scattered across a dozen platforms, and consumers are looking to their provider to pull them back together. They'll pay more, stay longer, and recommend whoever does it first. In this fight, bundling is the weapon. The telcos that move fast to bundle sports will win the customer, but the ones that hesitate will spend the next decade defending against churn."

The research, commissioned by Bango and conducted by an independent research agency, is based on a representative sample of 2,500 American consumers aged 18 and over and was conducted in May 2026.

NEW YORK—With streaming companies seeing their stocks rally on Wall Street, Paramount Global seemed to confirm investor confidence in the future of the streaming industry by reporting healthy subscriber growth and reduced losses in its streaming operations. 

In its Q3 2023 earnings report, Paramount reported that its Paramount+ streaming service added 2.7 million net subs for more than 63 million globally. 

Management also said that Paramount continues to progress on the path to streaming scale and profitability and that its direct-to-consumer (DTC) segment remains on track to drive significant earnings improvement in 2024.

“Q3 was yet another significant step in our building of a scaled, profitable streaming business,” president and CEO Bob Bakish said in a call with analysts. 

The DTC segment saw revenue increase 38% year-over-year as subscription revenue grew 46% to $1.3 billion, driven by subscriber growth and pricing increases for Paramount+, and revenue from pay-per-view events.

In addition, ad revenue in the DTC segment rose 18%, reflecting growth from Paramount+ and Pluto TV as global viewing hours across Paramount+ and Pluto TV grew 46%.

Overall, Paramount+ revenue grew 61%, driven by subscriber growth and increased advertising revenue as Paramount+ global ARPU expanded 16% year-over-year.

Streaming losses also narrowed. Adjusted OIBDA improved 31% as higher revenue more than offset incremental costs to support the growth of Paramount+.

The company is now forecasting that full-year DTC losses in 2023 will be lower than in 2022, with DTC losses in Q4’23 similar to Q4’22.

During the Q3 earnings call with analysts Paramount Global president and CEO Bob Bakish noted that “there's no question the media industry remains dynamic and in many ways, complex, but our performance this quarter demonstrates clear progress against strategic goals, as we set the company up to return to significant earnings growth in 2024. In the third quarter, we grew streaming revenue in Paramount Plus subscribers while narrowing D2C losses.” 

“Q3 was yet another significant step in our building of a scaled, profitable streaming business,” he noted later in the call. “Paramount Plus crossed 63 million subscribers, and we delivered 38% D2C revenue growth aided by a successful price increase. We also narrowed our D2C adjusted OIBDA losses by over 30%. In fact, we now believe 2022 was our year of peak streaming investment meaning D2C losses in 2023 will be lower than in 2022. We're clearly advancing on the path to streaming profitability and this continued D2C improvement will be a key driver of the total company earnings growth we expect next year. Related to that, our integration of Paramount+ and Showtime continues to deliver as we expected. Since it launched at the end of June, the combination has driven increases in acquisition and engagement, ARPU and operational efficiency. The power of partnerships is also a meaningful contributor to our momentum.”

Bakish also argued that the strengthening of their streaming operations would help them as their traditional pay TV business continues to decline. 

“Recent negotiations in the industry have raised questions about whether the hard bundling of streaming and pay TV will become the norm in the U.S. and what that could mean for companies like ours,” he said. “The reality is, operators have different priorities, but we've shown that we can adapt our partnerships to accomplish common objectives. As we go forward, it is possible that some of our partners will embrace the strategy that more tightly integrates DTC into the Pay TV bundle. And we expect that if they do, the bundles would have many of the same advantages we've observed in the various hard bundles we've deployed internationally, namely a dramatically lower cost of acquisition and improvement in streaming churn, and it may improve TV ecosystem trends as well.”

“In addition, adding the scale of U.S. pay TV to Paramount+ ad supported tier would bring incremental benefit to our digital advertising offering as well as an additional marketing and promotional value and it would provide an opportunity to upsell to Paramount+ with Showtime,” he added. “As a result, these deals, when structured with the right economic value have the potential to be additive to our model while improving simplicity and increasing value for the consumer. As a related point, it's worth noting that we have already finalized agreements with multiple distributors to offer Paramount+ with Showtime to their customers as a true multi-platform product. Importantly, this includes linear subscribers getting app credentials. That's where we are and where we're headed on distribution.”

NEW YORK—Broadband subscriptions worldwide are expected to hit 1.13 billion by 2023, exceeding the 1.09 billion traditional pay TV subscribers for the first time, according to a report from S&P Global Market Intelligence report.

The newly published "2023 Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) Industry Outlook," part of S&P Global Market Intelligence’s Big Picture 2023 Outlook Report Series, focuses on the market future of the metaverse in gaming and the enterprise, datacenter sustainability amid a worsening energy crisis, and the rise of fintech as a service. The report also explores video streaming competition and broadband transformation as forces of disruption in 2023.

The fact that broadband subscriptions will exceed pay-TV subscriptions has wide implications for the future of media, S&P says, which notes that gaming technology will be the driving force behind the metaverse’s evolution in the near term as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) hardware enables users to engage in virtual worlds in and outside of work. 

AR and VR device adoption will grow steadily over the next five years as big tech companies underline the hardware's potential as a conduit to the metaverse, S&P said. As of the end of 2021, the researcher estimates there were 28.5 million AR/VR headsets installed worldwide across consumer and commercial settings, and forecasts that base to grow to 73.6 million by 2026.

"The foundational shift of the global economy to a digital footing—a shift that has been underway for over a decade and accelerated during the pandemic—continues. This is creating enormous opportunities for new value creation and disruption,” said Eric Hanselman, Chief Research Analyst for TMT at S&P Global Market Intelligence.

For traditional TV, rising inflation and cost of living crises may force some consumers to pare back streaming subscriptions, which in turn could prompt the pack chasing Netflix and Disney to focus on profitability instead of scale, S&P said. By 2030, the researcher predicted that global pay TV penetration will fall to 51.2% of residential households, from 57.7% in 2021.

BOSTON—Whether they get their TV from an Apple TV, Firestick TV, Roku, smart TV or simple cable box, viewers want their options simplified and better managed, according to a new report from Hub Entertainment. 

According to Hub’s annual “Monetization of Video” study, 91% of survey respondents say accessing multiple streaming subscriptions makes the experience better, with 52% saying it makes the experience “a lot” better.  

Hub said that for 39% of respondents, these “aggregators” make it easier for them to watch content from all of their different sources. One third (34%) say they like the ease of adding new providers or of pausing or cancelling them (31%), and the remaining third say they like the convenience of consolidating multiple subscriptions into one bill.  

Eighty-seven percent of pay TV subscribers who watch streaming platforms through their set-top box say the ability to do that makes their pay TV subscription more valuable and almost half (48%) say it’s a lot more valuable. Hub’s research showed similar results for derived value:  among pay TV subs who watch SVODs through their set-top box, 70% said their pay TV subscription was an “excellent” or “good” value.  Among pay TV subs who don’t integrate their streaming platforms, it was only 50%.

When asked how aggregators improve the TV experience, the most common reason mentioned (39%) is that it makes it easier to watch content across all of their different sources. But for many, it also makes it easier to manage the subscriptions themselves:  a third say they like the ease of adding new providers (34%) or of pausing or cancelling them (31%). And 33%  say they like the convenience of consolidating multiple subscriptions into one bill.

“There’s no question that the golden age of streaming has made TV more fun for consumers,” said Jon Giegengack, Principal at Hub and one of the study authors.  “But it’s no fun trying to get the most out of that content when it’s spread across so many providers.  Aggregators enable viewers to get something playing on the screen with as few clicks as possible.  This is a big opportunity for pay TV operators to reclaim their traditional role—only this time instead of bundling networks, they’re bundling platforms.”

Hub’s 2022 “Monetization of Video” was conducted among 1,610 US consumers age 16-74.  All respondents have broadband and watch at least 1 hour of TV per week. The data was collected in June 2022.

Cable video customer losses, which improved over the past few quarters during the pandemic, are back on the rise, according to a Moody’s Investor Service report. 

While broadband subscriber growth exploded during the pandemic, lesser known was the impact stay-at-home orders had on pay TV video customer rolls. During Q3 2021, video losses tempered enough to cause a handful of analysts to rethink their forecasts. Wells Fargo Securities media analyst Steven Cahall modified his 2025 prediction for total pay TV video losses from 4.7 million to 4.3 million; MoffettNathanson senior analyst Craig Moffett expected cable video losses to spike to 2.4 million in 2021, falling to 1.98 million by 2025.

In his most recent report, Moody’s senior VP Jason Cuomo noted that the Video Replacement Rate (VRR) for the sector, a measure of the pace at which broadband is replacing traditional video subscriptions, fell to 1.5 times in 2021 from 2.21 times in the prior year. While that seems like a big improvement for video, it was more a factor of dramatically slower broadband growth. According to Cuomo’s report, broadband additions in Q4 slowed to 4.1% from 4.2% in Q3, while pay TV subscriber losses rose to 6.4% from 6.2% for the year.

In his report, Cuomo concluded that the temporary benefits from the pandemic are beginning to disappear and, coupled with newer subscribers taking only high-speed Internet services, should drive video’s decline higher as broadband additions even out. 

“Video losses will continue to be driven by weak attachment rates to broadband subscriptions among younger consumers, and a loss of existing subscribers because of ongoing cord-cutting by those switching to video streaming,” Cuomo wrote. “Rising penetration rates in residential and commercial markets, and gains from expansion of the footprint (new builds, overbuilds, and edge-outs) will continue to support broadband growth.”

While the two largest cable operators — Comcast and Charter Communications — had relatively strong increases in broadband subscribers (4.3% and 4.2%, respectively), their video losses varied widely. According to Moody’s, Comcast’s average video loss rate was -8.4%, while Charter’s was -2.4%. Comcast and Charter account for about 83% of cable video customers.

According to Moody’s, only three cable companies increased their VRRs in the period — Cable One (from 36.4 times to 85.1 times), Breezeline parent Cogeco Communications (from 7.5 times to 8.1 times) and WideOpenWest (from 0.7 times to 1.1 times). Charter had the biggest drop (from 54.7 times to 45.6 times) followed by Block Communications (from 1.8 to 1.4)  and Comcast (from 1.3 to 1.1).   

Revenue growth for the sector in Q4 was 4%, down from 7.2% in Q3 and 6.1% for the same period in the prior year. Cash flow growth fell to 5.9% in Q4, down from 9.6% in Q3 and 7.7% in Q4 2020. That, Cuomo wrote, was directionally consistent with the VRR trends. 

“We believe the slower growth is at least partially attributable to a difficult comparison to 2020 given the temporary benefit of the pandemic, which peaked during this time,” Cuomo wrote. “Growth, while at a lower level, is supported by the continued shift to lower-priced, higher-margin broadband (from higher-priced, but much lower-margin video).”

Broadband, he continued, accounted for about 54% of the total subscriber mix in Q4, and was nearly 2 times video subscribers in the period, up 20% from 1.7 times at the end of 2020. 

DALLAS, Texas—AT&T has reported new subscriber numbers for HBO Max and HBO, with the two services hitting 73.8 million subs at the end of 2021, up from 69.4 million subs around the world in Q3, 2021.

The numbers were revealed in a January 5, regulatory filing with the SEC issued prior to Pascal Desroches, senior executive vice president and chief financial officer, AT&T Inc. providing an update to shareholders at Citi’s AppsEconomy Conference.

The new sub counts mean that HBO Max and HBO beat management’s prior guidance that end-of-year subscribers would be at the high end of its 70 million to 73 million subscriber target.

The filing did not provide a breakdown of subs in the U.S. or other details on the streaming operations. 

DALLAS, Texas—AT&T has reported new subscriber numbers for HBO Max and HBO, with the two services hitting 69.4 million subs around the world in Q3, 2021, a 12.5 million bounce from a year earlier, and 1.9 million higher than Q2, 2021. 

AT&T said the streaming service will reach the higher end of its forecast for 70 million to 73 million global subscribers by the end of 2021.

In the U.S. the two services had 45.2 million subs in Q3, 2021, up 7.1 million in the past year. 

But domestic subscriber counts were down from 47.0 million in Q2 2021 because the company removed HBO from the Amazon wholesale platform, a decision that also slowed global sub growth in Q3, the company said. 

Domestic ARPU was $11.82 for the services.

AT&T also reported that operating revenue in the direct-to-consumer segment hit $2.04 billion in Q3, 2021, up from $1.62 billion a year earlier, while direct costs hit $2.04 billion, up from $1.55 billion in Q3, 2020.  

More on the results for other divisions can be found here and here. 

LOS GATOS, Calif.—There are now more than 200 million people across the world who subscribe to Netflix. Per the streamer’s Q4 2020 shareholder letter, Netflix officially has 203.66 million paid subscribers.

In a year where people stayed home to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, streaming saw a sizable increase in subscribers and time spent. For Netflix, 2020 saw a record growth of 37 million new paid subscribers. The streamer’s net addition was 8.5 million.

Netflix notes that 83% of its new subscribers for 2020 come from outside the U.S. and Canada. The EMEA region accounted for 41% of full-year adds, while APAC was the second largest contributor with 9.3 million, a 65% year-over-year increase. In North America, after a strong first half of 2020, neither Q3 or Q4 saw more than 1 million new subscribers join Netflix.

Financially, Q4 actually saw Netflix’s net income drop from $790 million in Q3 to $542 million. The company says that the drop was the result of a $258 million non-cash unrealized loss from foreign exchange remeasurement. Netflix’s revenue overall for 2020 was up 21.5%, with the streamer reporting a total revenue of $6.64 billion.

As part of its Q4 report, Netflix also provided its Q1 2021 projection. The streamer is expecting paid net adds of about 6 million for the first quarter. Q1 2020 netted 15.8 million paid additions, but those numbers saw boosts with the early days of the pandemic.

With its global subscription base, Netflix is still the largest streaming platform on the market. However, new additions Disney+ and, more recently, HBO Max, have been seeing strong gains in subscriptions as well.

For more information on Netflix’s Q4 shareholder report, visit Netflix’s website. 

NEW YORK—Verizon has shared its second quarter 2020 financial report, which shows that it loss 81,000 Verizon Fios TV subscribers, in large part due to the shift from traditional linear video to OTT offerings, the company says.

According to TVT’s sister publication Next|TV, Verizon Fios TV at one point had more than 5 million subscribers. As of this most recent financial report, the service’s number of subscribers has now fallen below 4 million.

It is an industry wide trend as more and more consumers cut the cord to traditional services. AT&T reported earlier this week that it had lost 886,000 traditional pay-TV subscribers, while its new HBO Max streaming service was growing. Also, a new study from Roku reported that 32% of U.S. TV homes no longer have a traditional pay-TV service.

Despite this, Verizon overall actually beat consensus revenue forecasts, totaling $30.45 billion in sales. This was helped by increases in postpaid wireless customers and those using Verizon’s 5G wireless service. In addition, Fios high-speed internet continues to grow.

Verizon has been attempting to draw customers in recent months by offering free, year-long subscriptions to new streaming services like Disney+ and the vMVPD YouTube TV.

For more information, visit Verizon’s website. 

As Netflix announced a record 16 million new subscribers in Q1 of 2020, questions are now being asked if the streaming service can sustain such big numbers post COVID-19.

Netflix added 2.3 million new subscribers in the U.S. and Canada to hit 70 million; and another 6.9 million across Europe, the Middle East and Africa to raise overall subscriber numbers in those territories to 59 million. The company now has 183 million subscribers globally.

In its quarterly letter to shareholders, Netflix admitted the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has had an impact on its subscriber numbers. “[O]ur membership growth has temporarily accelerated due to home confinement,” it said.

Meanwhile, CEO Reed Hastings said the company “doesn’t know anything more than anyone else,” in terms of what the rest of 2020 might hold. “We’re in the same uncertainty that everyone else is. The thing we are certain of is the internet is growing. It’s a bigger part of people’s lives, thankfully. And people want entertainment. They want to be able to escape and connect, whether times are difficult or joyous. We’ve had an increase in subscribers in March that’s essentially a pull-forward of the rest of the year.”

But the question remains, can Netflix sustain such a big increase in subscribers once countries start coming out of lockdown? “It’s always hard to forecast churn based upon changing user behavioral patterns as well as other factors,” tech, media and telco analyst Paolo Pescatore told TVT's sister publication TVBEurope.

“For sure, once social distancing and stay at home rules are lifted, then Netflix will see an impact and a slowdown in new subscribers signing up. But the lifting of restrictions will be a gradual process. Therefore, a service to entertain the entire household will still be needed.”

As to whether the launch of Disney+ in Western Europe at the end of March is likely to have had any impact of Netflix’s subscriber numbers, Pescatore said: “A surge in subs for both Netflix and Disney+ underline the popularity for these services.

PLUS: Netflix's Global Popularity Skyrockets Amid Coronavirus

“They are complementary in terms of offerings rather than compete directly. The launch of Disney+ raised the awareness of streaming video and has benefited both companies.”

WASHINGTON—Netflix and some of its longtime subscribers are coming to a parting of the ways as the streaming service has seen some big changes this year in regards to price and the content it offers.

A report from the Kill the Cable Bill blog, which partnered with a third-party data analytics firm to complete its survey, details how 2019 has been a challenging year for the streaming giant, which has seen slowing subscriber growth and isn’t retaining its U.S. customers at its usual rate.

Of those surveyed that had recently canceled Netflix, 63% had been Netflix subscribers for more than a year. The next closest were subscribers that had been signed up for 7-12 months (14%). Those who had been signed up for six months or less were under 10% each, including those who had signed up for a one-month free trial (7%). And of those who canceled, 25% said they do not plan to subscribe to Netflix again; 58% were unsure and 17% said they would.

The two most cited reasons for canceling Netflix among respondents were price increases and a lack of interesting content. Netflix issued a price increase to its services in May, raising its standard offering from $10.99 to $12.99 and its premium plan, which offers 4K streaming, from $13.99 to $15.99. Nearly half (49.4%) cited these prices increases as the key factor in their decision to cancel.

Lack of interesting content was second at 42%. Some of this may stem from Netflix losing the rights to popular content like “Friends,” “The Office” and many Disney properties as new streaming services from WarnerMedia, NBCUniversal and Disney have or prepare to enter the market. In fact, other streaming services was the third most popular response for leaving at 40%.

Disney+ and Apple TV+ are the two latest streaming services to enter the market and both with a lower price than Netflix—$6.99 and $4.99, respectively. Reports on the first few days of Disney+ put the new streamer at more than 10 million subscribers.

Kill the Cable Bill points out the Netflix’s international subscriber growth is still strong, helping to bring its total subscriber count to 158 million across 190 countries.

“[Netflix] cannot afford to ignore the increased domestic churn it’s facing domestically as more competitors with appealing, lower-priced offerings attempt to win over customers in the coming quarters,” the blog reads.

However, despite the numbers from Kill the Cable Bill’s report, multiple outlets have reported that Netflix is not being increasingly impacted by the launch of Disney+ in terms of its subscriber loss or stock value.

DURHAM, N.H.—Three out of every four homes in the U.S. subscribe to a pay-TV service, per new research from Leichtman Research Group, a significant drop from the reach pay-TV had 10 years ago when it was in nearly 90% of homes.

The new study, “Pay-TV in the U.S. 2019,” reveals that in 2009, according to LRG, 87% of homes had pay-TV service. That number dropped to 84% in 2014, and now sits at 75%. Almost an equal number of homes, 74%, subscribe to some kind of SVOD service as of 2019. LRG reports that 54% of homes have some kind of combination of pay-TV and SVOD, while 21% only have pay-TV and 20% only have SVOD; 5% have neither.

“With more options for watching live and on-demand video, consumers are increasingly choosing to cobble together the services that meet the viewing and economic needs of their household,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group.

Despite the drop in the number of subscribers, the mean reported spending on pay-TV is leveling off. For those who have pay-TV services, they are averaging a bill of $109.60 per month, a 6% increase since 2016. In total, including those who do not subscribe to pay-TV, that average is about $80 per month, slightly lower than the per household spending in 2015.

Other findings from LRG include that pay-TV subscribers that bundle services from a provider has dropped from 67% in 2014 to 60%. Pay-TV is more popular among older individuals, with 83% of those 45 and older subscribing to pay-TV compared to 64% for 18-44 year olds. It also shows that the more TVs a home has the more likely they are to subscribe to pay-TV—homes with three or more TVs are pay-TV subscribers 87% of the time, 75% with two TVs and 52% with one TV.

2019 also marked the first year since 2010 that less than half (47%) of TV sets in use were connected to a pay-TV providers’ set-top box. Meanwhile, over-the-air antennas are in use at 27% of TV households, including 53% in homes that are not pay-TV subscribers.

The full “Pay-TV in the U.S. 2019” report is available on LRG’s website.

DALLAS—At a Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media, Communications and Entertainment Conference, AT&T CFO John Stephens said that recent blackouts with Nexstar and CBS are likely to lead to an additional 300,000 to 350,000 subscribers dropping AT&T in the third quarter of 2019. Price increases were also noted as reasons for the loss of subscribers.

AT&T could be faced with another blackout situation, as Disney announced earlier this week that its deal with the provider is close to coming to an end with no new deal in place.

In addition, Stephens also spoke on AT&T's outlook, the possibility of selling DirecTV or regional sport networks and updates on its HBO Max streaming service.

TV Technology sister publication B&C has the full story.

Netflix could lose a significant amount of subscribers if it introduces adverts during its programming.

Hub Entertainment Research questioned 1,612 US TV consumers from ages 16 to 74 who watch at least an hour of TV per week and have broadband at home.

Their report found that almost 25 per cent of respondents said they would stop using the streaming service if it began running ads during Netflix content. Netflix currently has 130 million subscribers worldwide,

Asked if they would still use Netflix if it reduced the price of a monthly subscription to $3 a month as part of including ads on the service, 16 per cent of those surveyed said they would still cancel their Netflix subscription. Half of the respondents said they would probably stay with the service under the hypothetical scenario, and 25 per cent said they definitely would keep it.

“I think there are ways that they could arrange it so they retain as many customers as possible, but I think if they add ads at all, even at price reduction, there will be some people who leave,” Jon Giegengack, author of the report, said. “The question is, do the economics work out for them?”

Hub also examined how high Netflix could raise its monthly fees for its current ad-free offering before it would begin to lose subscribers.

A basic Netflix subscription in the US starts at $7.99 per month. If Netflix raised its monthly fee by $2, only eight per cent of the respondents said they would cancel. If Netflix increased by $5 per month, 23 per cent said they would stop using the streamer, and if it raised prices by $10 more per month, 28 per cent said they would cancel.

DURHAM, N.H.—The growth of internet-delivered pay-TV services in the third quarter of 2017 weren’t enough to counteract the loss of subscribers to cable, satellite and phone companies, per the report from Leichtman Research Group. With a loss of 407,230 subscribers in Q3, the top pay-TV providers, which make up for 95 percent of the market, now have 92.2 million subscribers.

The top six cable companies—Comcast, Charter, Altice, Mediacom, CableOne and an undisclosed private company—lost 289,230 subscribers, bringing its total to 48.1 million; the loss was 90,000 in Q3 2016. Satellite TV services saw a gain in Q3 2016 of about 5,000, but lost 475,000 this year; satellite subscribers now total about 32.3 million. Telephone providers saw a bounce back from 2016, losing 179,000 video subscribers in 2017 compared to 370,000 the year prior; telephone subscribers total 9.3 million.

The only service to net a positive in the third quarter was internet-delivered service, which consisted of SlingTV and DirecTV Now. After adding about 200,000 subscribers in Q3 2016, the services combined to bring in 536,000 subscribers for Q3 2017, 240,000 for SlingTV, 296,000 for DirecTV Now. With the new subscribers, these services total 2.5 million of the total pay-TV subscribers.

Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, estimates that 155,000 more subscribers were lost in Q3 2017 than in Q3 2016.

The full report is available here.

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MIDDLESEX, ENGLAND—Total global pay-TV subscribers have now reached 969 million, according to the latest Digital TV Research report.

According to the Global Pay-TV Subscriber Databook, 254 million additional pay-TV subscribers (up by 35 percent) signed up between 2010 and 2016 to take the global total to 969 million.

Digital cable TV created the most additions by platform—at 256 million between 2010 and 2016. However, analog cable TV lost 218 million subscribers. There were 76 million extra subs for IPTV to nearly quintuple its total. Satellite TV added 77 million and pay-DTT gained five million.

Digital pay-TV rocketed from 380 million subscribers in 2010 onto 852 million at end-2016.

The report found that Asia Pacific is the world’s largest pay-TV subscriber region; contributing 60 percent to the global total. China supplies about a third of the world’s pay-TV subscribers, with 313 million by end-2016.

For more information from the report, click here.

This story was originally published on TVT sister publication TVB Europe.

DURHAM, N.H.—A new data analysis from Leichtman Research Group shows that the largest U.S. pay TV providers lost about 795,000 net video customers in 2016, compared to a pro forma loss of around 445,000 subscribers in 2015. Cable remains the healthiest, however, losing its fewest numbers of subscribers since 2006 and topping satellite and telco TV providers with a total of 48.6 million video subscription.

Read the full story on TVT’s sister publication Multichannel News.