The adoption of subscription video on demand (SVOD) services has skyrocketed in Australia, with two million active subscriptions recorded at the end of June 2015, according to new research by Telsyte.
Up by more than six times from 315,000 subscriptions at the end of December 2014, the massive growth has been driven by the arrival of new services such as Netflix and Stan, free trial periods, and promotions offered by the leading Internet service providers, mobile carriers and TV manufacturers.
Telsyte’s Australian SVOD/OTT video market study shows that around 1.5 million of these subscriptions have been converted to fee-paying (no longer on a trial) and generated more than $17 million in revenues in the month of June.
The paid subscriber market leaders are Netflix, Stan, Presto and Quickflix. Together, they represent about 90% of all paid subscriptions.
However, there is a long tail of providers covering sports and special interest niches like AFL, NBA basketball, NRL and UFC matches.
A complicated web of streaming content rights as well as the widespread availability of free trials has resulted in SVOD subscribers having an average of 1.6 services.
Despite the increasing competition for eyeballs in the Australian online video market, Telsyte research indicates that streaming catch-up TV, SVOD and traditional pay-TV will co-exist.
At the end of June, almost 40% of Australian households that had SVOD services also subscribed to traditional pay-TV.