U.K. SVOD subs base tops 20 million

As of Q2, 20 million U.K. homes had an SVOD subscription, a penetration rate of 68.7 percent, marginally up from the 19.5 million reported in Q1, per data from Barb’s Establishment Survey.

Barb also found that Netflix’s ad tier is picking up traction in the U.K., now reaching 2.78 million homes, up from 2.12 million in Q1. Netflix is well ahead of Disney+, which averaged 820,000 homes with the ad tier in Q2.

In terms of overall subs, Netflix leads with 17.1 million, a share of 58.6 percent, up from 16.7 million in Q1. Prime Video also inched up, to 13.7 million (46.7 percent), with Disney+ at 7.6 million, Discovery+ at 3.2 million, Paramount+ at 2.8 million, Apple TV+ at 2.4 million and NOW at 1.98 million. The number of homes with two or more services now sits at 14 million, 48 percent of the overall base.

Doug Whelpdale, head of insight at Barb, noted, “More than 20 million U.K. homes have access to an SVOD service for the first time since Barb began collecting data in 2014. This figure is 1.25 million higher than in Q2 2023—a 6.6 percent increase. Building on strong growth in Q1 all services on the tracker saw a quarterly increase in the number of homes with access. Netflix added just under 0.9 million homes since Q4 2023, while Amazon gained almost 1.3 million in the first half of 2024. The challenge will be to maintain this momentum. Q3 2024 will be a key test to see if the pure-play VOD services can avoid the plateaus of the last three years, but 2024 appears to be going well for these services so far.” World Screen