Anyone who follows The Streamable’s expert analysis knows that 2023 was a bad year for pay-TV providers. New data from Leichtman Research Group is demonstrating just how bad cable and satellite companies had it last year; the firm’s data shows that the biggest pay-TV distributors in the United States like Charter, Comcast, DIRECTV, and DISH lost nearly 7 million subscribers in 2023.

• Comcast dropped more than 2 million customers in 2023, the most of any cable channel distributor.
• Around 3.5 million new broadband accounts were created at top companies last year, creating more opportunities for streamers.
• One recent report predicted that pay-TV companies would lose nearly 50 million customers in the next five years.

Traditional cable companies piled up the losses as more and more customers decided to cut the cord in 2023. Comcast saw 2,036,000 departures during the year, the most of any company, according to Leichtman. Charter’s losses weren’t quite as dramatic, but it still dropped more than one million subscribers over the course of the year, even though the company was able to secure free Disney+ and ESPN+ accounts for its cable customers through a new carriage deal with Disney.

Satellite companies also saw widespread departures in 2023. DIRECTV was the biggest loser, as it saw 1.8 million satellite, DIRECTV STREAM, and AT&T U-Verse customers cancel their subscriptions last year. DISH also suffered, losing nearly 950,000 subscribers and falling below 7 million total customers. Altogether, satellite services and telecom providers like Verizon lost more than 3 million net pay-TV subscribers in 2023, nearly as many as cable, despite the overall customer base of these companies being significantly smaller than that of cable outlets.

Leichtman also found that the largest cable and wireline phone providers and fixed wireless services in the U.S. – representing about 96% of the market – added more than 3.5 million new broadband internet subscribers during the year. This creates new opportunities for streaming providers, many of whom are looking internationally, to begin adding even more domestic customers. While there is already deep penetration for streaming among American consumers, as more and more homes upgrade to high-speed broadband internet, the reliance on hardline TV options increasingly goes away, making streaming much more of a possibility.

Indeed, channel bundles distributed via streaming were the only segment of the pay-TV industry that saw gains in 2023. YouTube TV grew the most, adding 1.9 million subscribers during the year to reach its impressive total of 8 million customers. In total, virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPDs, the industry term for live TV streaming services) added a net of 1.894 million subscribers during the year, and Sling TV was the only one to experience net losses.

^^ indicates a LRG revised estimate. On February 6, 2024 the company posted “we have more than 8 million subscribers to YouTube TV.” Company subscriber counts may not solely represent residential households.

How Are Pay-TV Providers Trying to Fight Cord-Cutting?

These losses are just the latest in a snowballing effect for the pay-TV industry as the subscriber declines for these companies will only accelerate the process of losing even more customers in the future. Cable and satellite distributors are facing rising carriage and retransmission fee demands from network owners, meaning that they have to pay to carry more to offer popular channels like ESPN and local affiliates of ABC, CBS, and other broadcast TV options.

That usually leads to subscription fee increases for customers, which naturally leads to more cord-cutting. Leicthman makes the accelerated pace of cord-cutting easy to track; it registered millions of losses for cable distributors in 2019, and it found that pay-TV companies lost nearly six million customers in 2022. If anything, the pace of cord-cutting will only increase, as a recent report from Digital TV Research found that pay-TV distributors will lose 49 million more customers by 2029.

Different cable and satellite companies are following different strategies to try and keep customers engaged. The above-mentioned carriage deal between Disney and Charter includes a provision that gives Charter’s Spectrum TV customers free access to Disney streaming services to increase the perceived value of their cable plan. Sling TV has launched a new rewards program to stop its subscribers from defecting, which makes sense when considering it’s the only live TV streamer that experienced a net customer loss in 2023.

Other companies are counting on an increase in broadband customers to at least partially offset losses from their TV divisions. Charter added 155,000 broadband users in 2023 according to Leichtman, and while Comcast shed around 66,000 internet customers during the year, it still has more than 32 million broadband subscribers total, more than double the number of cable subscribers it now has.

The fate of traditional cable is sealed, and the next evolution of the cable bundle is coming. Some see the new joint venture sports streaming platform underway from Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery as a path forward, as channel owners could begin deciding to package their networks with those of other media companies in smaller channel bundles that cost less than a regular cable plan and are offered directly to the consumer, skipping the pay-TV intermediary.

Whether that becomes the future of pay TV or not, Leichtman’s data makes one thing clear. Traditional cable and satellite customers should do whatever they can to keep their heads above water for as long as possible, but sooner or later they’re simply going to run out of customers.