VMVPDs' Subscriber Spikes Won't Negate Cable, Satellite Declines: EMarketer

By the end of next year, fewer than half of U.S. homes will have a traditional pay-TV subscription, reported eMarketer Tuesday, forecasting a 4.8% decline from 2022 to 65.1 million. In February 2022, 52.4% of homes, 68.5 million, had a traditional pay-TV account. Subscriptions will steadily decline through 2026, when the number of pay-TV households will fall to 57.2 million, 42.4% of homes, it said. From 2016 to 2021, pay TV lost more than 50 million adult viewers, 25.5 million households, with the steepest drop in 2020 at 7.7%, the report said. Many cord-cutters will turn to virtual MVPD services such as Hulu+Live TV and YouTube TV; the segment is expected to grow 7.6% this year vs. 2021, to 11.4% of all U.S. households, eMarketer said. Though virtual MVPDs will benefit from traditional pay-TV subscriber losses, their growth won’t be enough to offset the decline in cable, satellite TV and fiber TV customers, it said. This year, 63.2% of all households will have either traditional pay TV or a VMVPD service, but the percentage is expected to drop to 54.8% in 2026. Deals for live sports programming and ad-supported tiers of TV services are creating an “increasingly enticing environment for disgruntled pay TV households to finally cut the cord,” it said.