Just under two thirds of homes in the United Kingdom have access to an online video subscription service. The proportion was down slightly in the second quarter of 2023 to 65.9% from 67.4% in the first quarter and a peak of 68.5% in the first quarter of 2022. Netflix and Amazon Prime video both saw small drops, while Paramount+ reached 5.9% of households.
57.7% of homes said they had access to Netflix in the second quarter of 2023, down from 59.0% the previous quarter, when just under 17 million homes in the United Kingdom could use Netflix.
44.0% of homes had access to Amazon Prime Video, down from 44.9% the previous quarter.
25.2% of homes had access to Disney+, up from 24.8%. That is about 7 million homes.
7.1% had NOW, powered by sky, and 6.6% had Apple TV+, both unchanged from the previous quarter.
5.9% had Paramount+, rising above the 5% threshold at which BARB breaks out services. It puts Paramount+ in about 1.67 million homes in the United Kingdom, a year after launch.
The data, from the quarterly establishment survey released by audience measurement organisation BARB, comes with some caveats. It is based on a sample-based survey and depends on respondent recall of which services they have.
The establishment survey is a continuous survey of 53,000 household interviews per year, carried out for BARB by Ipsos.
BARB appears to be reluctant to report online video subscriptions in absolute numbers and has switched to providing percentages of households, without revealing the base.
The numbers are slightly different to those reported by the Kantar Worldpanel Entertainment on Demand survey, which suggested that just under 20 million homes in the United Kingdom subscribe to at least one online video service, representing 68% of all households.
The numbers are sufficiently similar to validate the broad numbers and small percentage variances are not significant. However, it does seem that adoption of online video subscription services has levelled off following a peak at the start of 2022, amid greater competition.