We’re continuing with a closer look at the Speciality SVOD market by sharing some more insights from our latest State of Subscriptions Report. Premium SVOD services who cater to “the masses” consider almost every American household as part of their total addressable market (TAM) in the U.S. But Specialty SVOD services who are targeting more niche audiences typically must be more considerate about assessing their TAM.
The positive news for Specialty services is that the category continues to grow rapidly, and has not shown any indication that it is approaching its ceiling.
Since the start of 2022, Antenna has observed an average of 2.4M unique individuals per quarter subscribing for the first time to any of the 25 Specialty SVOD services we measure. Effectively, these individuals are entering the Specialty category. That number is higher than during the COVID lockdowns, and continues to grow.
If we use a similar analysis to count the cumulative number of individuals who have ever subscribed to an SVOD service, Antenna observes that 169M unique Americans had subscribed to one of the 35 services we measure as of June 2023, up from fewer than 90M at the start of 2019. Put another way, about 80M consumers have “found” the SVOD category since 2019 (+90% over the period).
For Specialty SVOD, the growth was truly explosive. At the beginning of 2019, Antenna had observed only 8M Americans who had ever subscribed to a Specialty SVOD service. By mid-2023, that number was over 40M, a 400% increase. This means that 32M Americans have found the Specialty category in the past 4.5 years.
Extending that analysis, of the 169M consumers who have transacted with an SVOD service, 24% of them have done so with a Specialty service as of June 2023. At the start of 2019, that number was only 9%, so Specialty’s penetration of the total subscription video audience has significantly increased in this time period. The growth in penetration has not shown any signs of hitting a ceiling.
You can sign up to download the full report, State of Subscriptions: Specialty SVOD, on our homepage.
For more detailed information on Antenna’s methodology and definitions of core metrics, please visit http://www.antenna.live/methodology.
Brendan Brady is a Content Strategy Associate at Antenna, a measurement and analytics company providing insight into purchase behavior and subscription metrics across the new media landscape.
