While Roku and Amazon Fire TV perform well with consumers when it comes to accessing many thousands of video streaming apps, both post poorer results for major legacy media-owned premium streaming platforms.
Recent analysis from media measurement and analytics company Antenna, via MoffettNathanson, shows 64% of subscribers signed up for the top-ten streaming services directly via those streamers’ company websites -- not through Roku or Amazon Fire TV.
The top-ten list here includes: Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock, Paramount+, Apple TV+, discovery+, Showtime, and Starz.
After going directly to a company's website to access these streamers, the next-biggest distributor is iTunes (with a 15% share), followed by Amazon Channels (9%), Roku (5%), Hulu (2%), and Google Play (2%). After this comes The Roku Channel and YouTube TV with less than 1%.
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To give this some context, the Roku Store overall, offers over 29,000 apps; Amazon Fire TV, nearly 15,000, according to reports.
Antenna notes that Roku, for example, contributes to getting 16% of Peacock’s overall subscribers. Next for Roku comes HBO Max (14%) and Discovery+ (13%).
But this may change, especially for the latter two services.
“While HBO Max has been a notable driver of Roku’s platform revenues, we believe there is risk to being so exposed to one partner in particular,” the MoffettNathanson authors write.
“Especially with the merger of Warner Bros. Discovery, we believe Roku will lose negotiating leverage, which should make it harder to monetize HBO Max/discovery+ during the next distribution agreement, perhaps due in a few years.”
The report estimates Roku has virtually zero share of subscribers who sign up for Netflix, Hulu, and Apple TV+.“Netflix appears to have negotiating leverage to get users to sign up directly without going through Roku (and paying Roku a 20% fee). Apple also seems to have leverage over Roku,”