Antenna Insights On The Subscription Economy

NBCUniversal and the NFL certainly turned heads when they announced the AFC Wild Card Game would be available exclusively on Peacock. NBCUniversal has stated that the January 13 matchup between Kansas City and Miami was the biggest live-streamed event in U.S. history and drove internet usage in a single day in the U.S. to a new record. But did it also drive subscriber growth to record levels?

While the market for subscription streaming video continues to evolve, November 2023 marked an important milestone: it was the first month we observed the majority of sign-ups for Premium SVOD services going to ad-supported plans.

Much has been made of the aging of Sports audiences on linear TV. But Antenna data indicates that live sports are attracting younger audiences across a number of different platforms and fan types.

We’ve previously written about the rise of AVOD and how consumers are incorporating ad-supported plans into their own personal mix of subscription streaming services. But how are AVOD plans holding up? And for those formerly ad-free services that have rolled out ad-supported tiers, are they gaining traction?

Last week we released Antenna’s Q4 State of Subscriptions Report focused on Sports and shared a few insights around the size, scale, and loyalty of streaming sports audiences. As we continue to look at sports streaming, we wanted to dig into the incremental benefits of sports programming to media partners. 

Sports programming has always been a centerpiece of the linear pay TV package.

The market for Premium SVOD continues to be dynamic as consumers navigate the introduction of new service tiers and bundles, changes to pricing plans, and brand strategies.

Subscription marketers often talk about “acquisition” and “churn” as if they were simple binary propositions. But the truth of subscriber journeys is that they are actually far more complex, and to successfully manage their businesses, subscription services must deeply understand these paths. Antenna recently teamed up with Adobe on a custom analysis to better understand the journey of the streaming subscriber and the business impact.

With Netflix set to report quarterly earnings this week, we’re back with another update on user acquisition and a look at sign-ups by plan type.