UK homes cancelled 2m streaming services last year

UK homes cancelled 2m streaming services last year as cost of living crisis soared 

More than 2 million subscriptions to services such as Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+ were cut by cash-strapped Britons as the cost of living crisis fuelled the first annual decline since the UK streaming revolution began a decade ago. 

Despite a royal boost – via The Crown and Harry & Meghan, almost 900,000 UK households gave up on the streaming services last year, as the total number having at least one paid-for subscription fell from 17.12m in 2021 to 16.24m. 

Many households that still stream have multiple subscriptions, with an average of 2.5 services. The total number of video subscriptions fell by just over 2m last year to 28.5m.

The final quarter of 2022 offered signs of a modest recovery, however, as the period added a net increase of 300,000 subscriptions. 

But it’s suspected the recovery will be short-lived as evidence shows customers were looking for a binge over the Christmas period. 

The research firm Kantar said the proportion of consumers planning to cancel one or more subscription video-on-demand services in the first three months of 2023 had risen to 12% from 9.6%, “indicating short-term holiday quarter subscribers are quickly looking to cut back”.

Netflix still not recovered in UK 

The launch of Netflix’s low-cost ad-supported tier – which Netflix hopes will be a £2.4bn annual global business has so far failed to grow in the UK. 

Netflix is the UK’s most popular streaming service, the royal TV shows pulled in millions of viewers – and bought subscribers back to the site. 

The company has rebounded globally – adding 7.7 million subscribers in the fourth quarter, well ahead of its 4.6 million forecast, but still the smallest increase for the period since 2017 – but it has still not recovered in the UK. 

The growth in UK subscriptions in the final quarter was led by Amazon’s Prime Video. It benefitted from the popularity of its parent company in the run-up to Christmas with shoppers getting service bundled as part of a Prime subscription, AppleTV+ and Paramount+. 

In total, there were 1.5m new streaming subscriptions in the UK in the fourth quarter, and 1.2m cancellations, resulting in overall growth of 300,000.

Across the year, Disney+ added the most new subscribers of any video-on-demand service in the UK.