What Are ‘Show Chasers’ and Why Are They Likely to Become a More Common Problem for Streaming Services?
Data from Antenna shows there’s a new cohort of serial churner out there for streamers to contend with, and the problem is likely to get worse.
The lack of long-term contracts for subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) streaming services is one of the main features that sets them apart from traditional pay-TV plans. Viewers get the option to sign up for a service and cancel whenever they want with no fees, which has led to plenty of creativity among consumers as they try to dodge hefty subscription fee increases and still keep track of where their favorite titles are streaming. The media analytics firm Antenna has measured a 300% increase in the industry-wide cancelation rate as prices rise and the number of new streaming platforms increases, and now the company has identified a new group of churning customers: show chasers, who follow specific titles from platform to platform. When zooming out and taking a wider view of the state of the industry, it’s likely this new cohort of streaming cancelers is about to grow substantially.
Key Details:
- Antenna has measured that 38% of serial churners are now show chasers.
- Only 15% of show-chasers stay subscribed to a streamer for 13 months or longer.
- The industry-wide jump in licensing agreements will likely cause explosive growth in the show chaser cohort.
Earlier this year, Antenna defined “serial churners” as customers who have canceled three or more premium streaming services in the past two years. This group now comprises 29 million American customers, approximately one-quarter of the entire streaming population.
Within the group of serial churners, Antenna has measured a cohort that cancels three or more SVOD subscriptions within three months of signing up. Antenna interprets this behavior as customers signing up to a streamer to watch a specific title, and then canceling their subscription because they have watched all of the specific shows they want to see. They then pick another streaming subscription and cancel just as quickly, most likely because they followed a specific title to that streamer, then watched it and decided they no longer needed the platform. Antenna has dubbed this subset of viewers “show chasers,” and 38% of serial churners fall into the show-chaser category.
Click graph to expand.
As can be expected, this group of subscribers is not terribly loyal to a specific platform. Among customers who subscribed to an Antenna-measured SVOD service in the fourth quarter of 2022, 56% of non-serial churners (subscribers who have canceled two or fewer services within the past two years) were still subscribed to that same service six months later, compared to just 29% of show chasers. By the 13-month mark, 38% of non-serial churners were still subscribed to the service, but the number plummets to just 15% among show chasers.
Click graph to expand.
Are More Customers Set to Become Show Chasers?
If Antenna’s analysis of its own data is correct, and chasing specific titles is causing a subset of viewers to cancel their streaming subscriptions to follow a show to a new platform, industry trends suggest that the problem is about to get much worse for providers.
That’s because streamers are increasingly embracing content licensing as a way to boost engagement and revenues. Streaming services used to prize exclusivity of content, but market pressures are forcing essentially all platforms to reexamine even their most cherished dogmas and find new ways to generate revenue to stem losses and become profitable.
That means that the phenomenon of shows moving between platforms is likely to become more common. Disney recently licensed 14 shows to Netflix, allowing that streamer to share their rights with Disney+ and Hulu. Disney has promised that core brands like Star Wars and Marvel will stay exclusive to its own streaming platforms, but putting some content on other streamers can help drive customers who are wondering what they could be missing to its own services.
Max hasalready seen the benefits of a licensing agreement with Netflix, and some analysts have wondered if the company is costing itself big bucks by keeping shows like “Friends” and “The Sopranos” as exclusives on its platform. If these streamers see a financial upside to increasing the number of licensing agreements they make, there’s no doubt they’ll continue to increase.
If the amount of cross-platform licensing does grow in the coming months, the show chaser cohort measured by Antenna will likely see a corresponding jump in members. It’s another example of how businesses can create unintended consequences for themselves when trying to open new revenue streams, and it demonstrates how complicated building profitable streaming businesses can be.
Max
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