According to the UBS Evidence Lab Streaming TV App Monitor, streaming service such as DIRECTV Now and Sling TV are going to have a tough time growing their subscriber numbers as growth in the vMVPD space has slowed down.
The study estimates that streaming TV subscribers totaled 8.6 million overall, or approximately 9% of total video subscribers and is expected to make up only 20% of the total video market by 2022.
The study seems to be somewhat consistent with first quarter results reported by DIRECTV NOW and Sling TV. In April, AT&T reported a decline of 83,000 DIRECTV NOW customers and saw a decline of 5.2% in Q1 for DIRECTV NOW subscriptions. While Sling TV added 7K net subscribers in the first quarter, the company lost more than 261K satellite subscribers.
UBS is basing its predictions for slower vMVPD subscriber growth on its streaming TV spend tracker data, which follows credit card transactions. The firm’s data displayed decelerating growth in brand incidence, which UBS uses as a proxy for predicting subscriber growth.