Bundles Can Reduce Churn By More than 60%; Which Streamers Would See the Most Upside from Bundling?
Antenna’s new State of Subscriptions report has a wealth of data for streamers as many prepare to launch new bundles of their own.
To streaming analysts, the future of the industry has been clear for some time. Streaming bundles are obviously a necessary evolution, especially as prices rise and the cost of stacking individual services approaches the price of the cable bundle. Several new streaming bundles have been released or announced in 2024, and the newly released “State of Subscriptions” report from Antenna shows just how beneficial the act of bundling can be for services that need to reduce churn and prop up engagement as they continue to search for greater profits.
Key Details:
- The Disney Bundle reduces ESPN+ churn by as much as 66%.
- Max and STARZ have the most to gain from potential bundles.
- The Disney+, Max and Hulu bundle launching this summer could turn millions of curious customers into loyal ones.
The numbers from Antenna show that streaming services which already bundle have seen good results so far. The Disney Bundle is the most famous streaming combination available as of now, and allows viewers to package Disney+ and Hulu together for a discounted price, or add ESPN+ as well for even more savings. Antenna’s numbers show this helps bring down churn for all three services, but ESPN+ benefits most; by itself, ESPN+ has a churn rate of around 9% but the Disney Bundle’s average churn rate plummets to under 3%, a decline of more than 60%.
Apple TV+ has long been thought of as a streamer that would benefit from bundling due to its higher-than-average churn rate and library comprised of mostly high-quality original shows without much of a back-catalog of older programming. Antenna’s data confirms this, as the Apple One bundle featuring Apple TV+, Apple Music, Apple News+, Apple Fitness+, Apple Arcade and iCloud+ also slashes the standalone churn rate of Apple TV+ by more than 60%.
Bundling makes streamers more valuable to customers because they can usually get a bundle for the same cost as just one of its member streaming services would be by itself. That type of meaningful savings gives viewers extra reason to try and find something new on a streamer rather than simply signing up for one show and canceling, since leaving the bundle means leaving every service in it instead of just one.
Which Streamers Stand to Gain Most from Bundling?
Antenna has also put together a detailed analysis of which streaming services would be best served by seeking out new bundling opportunities. It has grouped current streaming subscribers into two categories for this analysis: curious customers, who have canceled that streamer in the past or signed up to it fewer than six months ago, and committed customers who have been subscribed for longer than six months and have never canceled the service in question before.
Two services with a large proportion of committed customers aren’t good bundling partners, because the bundle stands a good chance of cannibalizing committed customers who are already signed up to the services by themselves. Conversely, streamers with high amounts of curious customers are better prospective bundlers, because they have a good chance of converting big percentages of curious subscribers to committed ones.
Its data shows that Max and STARZ are the the two streamers with the highest ratio of curious customers to committed ones. Only 20% of current Max subscribers are committed, and the number dips to 15% for STARZ. Every streaming service besides Netflix has more curious than committed customers, but Max and STARZ are the clear standouts as far as services that could benefit the most from joining bundles.
That data is sure to cheer Max executives, particularly as the streamer is ready to join a new bundle with Disney+ and Hulu that will launch this summer. Antenna’s numbers show there’s a significant overlap between both Disney streamers and Max in terms of curious customers; Max and Hulu combined offer a 10:1 ratio of curious to committed customers, and Max and Disney+ see 9:1 ratio of overlapping curious customers to committed customers.
Bundles are obviously one of the best engagement plays a streamer can make, and most services are not ignoring the opportunity. Antenna’s data makes it clear what a wise strategy that is for streamers, and shows which services could see the biggest rise in engagement from bundling as they try to scrape together a wider profit margin.
Disney+
Disney+ is a video streaming service with over 13,000 series and films from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, The Muppets, and more. It is available in 61 countries and 21 languages. It is notable for its popular original series like “The Mandalorian,” “Ms. Marvel,” “Loki,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” and “Andor.”