Pay-TV providers lost 1.96 million subs in this year's first quarter, Leichtman reported.
“The second quarter of 2022 marked the second consecutive quarter with over 1.9 million net pay-TV losses,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for LRG. "Over the past year, top pay-TV providers had a net loss of about 5,425,000 subscribers, compared to a net loss of about 4,550,000 over the prior year.”
As of Q2, the top pay-TV providers account for about 72.2 million subscribers – with the top seven cable companies having about 39.5 million video subscribers, other traditional pay-TV services having about 25.5 million subscribers, and the top publicly reporting Internet-delivered (virtual multichannel video providers/vMVPDs) pay-TV services having about 7.2 million subscribers.
Top cable providers had a net loss of about 950,000 video subscribers in 2Q 2022 – compared to a loss of about 590,000 subscribers in 2Q 2021.The biggest cable TV losers were Comcast (-520,000 subs) and Charter (-226,000).
Other traditional pay-TV services (satellite and telco) had a net loss of about 710,000 subscribers in 2Q 2022 – compared to a loss of about 700,000 subscribers in 2Q 2021.
Biggest losers: DirecTV (-400,000) and Dish TV (-202,000).
Top publicly reporting vMVPDs had a net loss of about 265,000 subscribers in 2Q 2022 – compared to a gain of about 55,000 subscribers in 2Q 2021.
Biggest losers: FuboTV (-109,510) and Hulu + Live TV (-100,000). Sling TV lost 55,000 subs.