• by Wayne Friedman , over 1 hour ago

Despite heavy competition and maturity of the streaming business, there is still room for streaming platforms to make revenue gains -- at the expense of pay TV -- when it comes to consumer subscriptions, according to Madison and Wall.

Total consumer spending across all video -- pay TV, theatrical, streaming, and home entertainment -- is estimated to have risen just 1.2% in the third quarter of this year, versus the year before, to around $38 billion.

“With streaming at 36% of the video wallet, we continue to believe that a large share of legacy pay TV spend can still migrate without increasing total household spending,” according to Brian Wieser, media analyst and founder of Madison and Wall.

Wieser says U.S. consumers spend around $90 billion yearly, with 55% still going to the traditional bundle of linear pay TV -- cable, satellite and virtual services.

“[This is] providing significant ongoing upside opportunity for streaming, even with ongoing price increases for individual services,” he adds.

As more premium content continually moves to streaming services -- especially sports -- he says consumers will look to streaming alternatives, even as many of those individual services are raising prices themselves.

“The viewing simply follows the platform where the content lives, and consumers have shown a willingness to pay for access," Wieser adds.