More than half of all U.S. homes with broadband subscribe to both a pay-TV service and at least one over-the-top video service, according to a new study by Parks Associates.
In its OTT Video & TV Everywhere: Partners, Alternatives and Competition report, Parks says that 53% of broadband homes subscribe to both pay TV and OTT.
“Many OTT services are evolving to be complementary to the market’s largest players, instead of trying to compete directly against Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu,” said Brett Sappington, senior director of research, Parks Associates. “Also, consumers are increasingly self-aggregating their OTT and entertainment services—they are adopting primary entertainment content sources and supplementing those sources with complementary video options.”
Parks says that there are more than 200 OTT video services up and running in the U.S., and another 100 in Canada. During 2016 and 2017 60 companies introduced new OTT services, and only seven services were shut down.
“Several factors are driving an increase in partnerships with and among OTT video services, including fragmentation of content, the success of bundling, polarization in the OTT subscription market, a low threshold for OTT service survival, and low awareness of many OTT service brands,” Sappington said.
While the OTT world shakes out, consumer are still getting to know the TV Everywhere features of the pay-TV subscriptions. Parks found that awareness of TV Everywhere capabilities reached 34% in late 2016.
