Niche SVOD services are growing faster than premium players

Specialty SVOD services, which focus on one particular audience or content category, have grown significantly faster than the premium players in the past two years, according to Antenna’s recent “Quarterly Growth Reports (Q1’21, Q4’20)”. The ten specialty SVOD services the company tracks have 74% compound annual growth rate, compared to 30% for the ten premium SVOD studied.

According to Antenna, “the success of new services like Disney+, Peacock, and Discovery+, and the growth of existing players like HBO, Showtime and Starz, demonstrates that consumers will support a robust selection of premium SVOD players”.

In mid-2019, Netflix and Hulu accounted for nearly 75% of premium SVOD subscriptions. However, a lot has changed in the last two years. Nowadays, Netflix and Hulu make up just 48% of Antenna’s category Subscriptions, and have accounted for only 9% of category Growth in the past two years.