DIRECTV STREAM Saw 175% Increase During 2022 Football Season, but That’s Not Actually Possible, Is It?
There’s no doubt that the pay-TV industry is on the decline. Household penetration of pay-TV services (mainly cable and satellite) is at its lowest point since 1993, and with the NFL regular season now over, the annual boost those providers get from America’s most popular sport is about to evaporate.
The trouble is, no one seems to have told DIRECTV STREAM that pay TV is on the way out. According to MoffettNathanson’s “All Things Streaming” fourth-quarter report, the virtual multichannel video programming distributor (vMVPD) saw a 175% year-over-year increase in minutes streamed during the fourth quarter of 2022; a rise that seems unfathomable given everything else that we know about the way that the industry is trending.
It’s nearly impossible to definitively explain why DIRECTV STREAM saw such a massive influx of viewers in Q4, especially since DIRECTV does not report its quarterly user numbers publicly. However, the 2022 season was the last year that the streamer’s satellite counterpart DIRECTV served as the host of the NFL’s out-of-market games package NFL Sunday Ticket, but streaming subscribers can only access Sunday Ticket in very limited circumstances (if they live in dorms, apartments, or other areas where satellite service is not readily available). So, it’s highly unlikely that enough new customers who fall into those limits shelled out the $300 necessary to drive an increase of 175%.
What’s more likely is that a change in the way DIRECTV counts its users is responsible for the uptick. In May of 2022, the company made its app a one-stop destination for both satellite and streaming users, so it’s possible that DIRECTV is lumping both user numbers together. It’s also possible that the company decided to group Sunday Ticket users with the rest of its customers when reporting its minutes streamed to MoffettNathanson.
Again, DIRECTV’s parent company AT&T does not publicly disclose the individual subscriber totals, so whether its data-capturing methods account for the rise in minutes streamed in Q4 will likely never be known for sure. But MN’s report does show conclusively that pay-TV subscriber growth, including vMVPDs like DIRECTV STREAM, is shrinking at a faster and faster rate.
Given that information, there seems little chance that DIRECTV STREAM will be repeating its Q4 success anytime soon, especially without the ancillary additions of non-traditional Sunday Ticket subscribers. Indeed, the service may now find itself at a tipping point, as it recently announced a price increase for all of its plan tiers. Streamers that offer fewer services and products at a higher price are not likely to attract additional customers, especially at a starting price of $74.99 per month.
DIRECTV STREAM still offers more regional sports networks (RSNs) than any service besides fuboTV, so it will likely continue to hold on for a few more years. Live sports are one of the last factors keeping pay-TV services going, but RSNs and their pay-tv hosts have a similar problem. They are both seeing their customer bases shrink, which means they have to keep raising prices on their existing users to keep themselves afloat.
This formula of diminishing returns spells the long-term doom of pay-TV unless a seismic shift in the industry occurs. In short, DIRECTV Stream should enjoy its success now, because it likely won’t last for much longer.
DIRECTV STREAM
DIRECTV STREAM is a live TV streaming service, which is essentially the streaming version of the DIRECTV service. All packages include local channels and at least 31 of the top 35 cable channels. New subscribers can get a free Gemini streaming device from the company, in which case the service is called “DIRECTV via Internet.”