With streaming reaching almost 100% market share, Worldpanel’s latest Entertainment on Demand (EoD) data on the US streaming market finds that the biggest driver of subscriptions in Q4 2024 was sports content.
According to the findings, streaming grew less than 1% in Q4’24, now reaching 96%, or 125M, US households and stacking (average number of video streaming services accessed per household) of paid video streaming services is flat. US households subscribe to 4.1 paid video streaming services on average, unchanged from the previous quarter.
While the market is relatively stable, Worldpanel EoD study uncovers the following behaviors and findings within the Video on Demand (VoD) market between October to December 2024:
- Paid, ad-free streaming (SVoD) has stopped its decline while free, ad-supported streaming (FAST) declined in Q4, after a year of consecutive growth. For the first time in 2024, SVoD grew (+2% quarter-on-quarter) instead of contracting as a category. Growth of the SVoD category was driven by ESPN+, Hulu, Peacock, and Paramount+. Weekly FAST users, on the other hand, declined by 1% quarter-on-quarter.
- Live events, not discounts, drive growth. Despite Cyber Monday discounts, paid ad-supported streaming grew by just 1% in Q4. Sports are driving growth in streaming in Q4, driving sign up for Prime Video, ESPN+, Netflix, and Peacock.
- Enjoyable content is not enough to sustain platform dominance. The top 3 titles cited as most enjoyed in Q4’24 include Yellowstone (available on Peacock), followed by The Lincoln Lawyer (Netflix), and The Penguin (Max). However, these were not the biggest “growers” in Q4. Prime Video, Paramount+, and Tubi saw the greatest absolute growth in subscribers in Q4.
Sports are driving sign up to streaming, but loyalty is not guaranteed
ESPN+ and Prime Video were two of the fastest growing streaming services in Q4 2024. Football (NFL) was the #3 most cited content driving sign up to Prime Video, which has invested in its NFL coverage over the past few years. Additionally, the Jake Paul vs Mike Tyson fight on Netflix was the #1 title driving acquisition for the service in the quarter.
Acquiring new subscribers through sports does drive growth but these subscriptions may not be sustained over time. Typically, post football season, the subscriber base of sports focused services flattens or declines. In Q1 2024, ESPN+ subscribership flattened, while Prime Video’s subscribership dropped. For Netflix, the impact of hosting its first live sports event (the Jake Paul vs Mike Tyson fight) in Q4’24 is already evident. Despite the live event being the #1 title driving acquisition for Netflix in Q4, its overall subscriber base grew by only 1%.
The investment in sports by a greater number of streaming services points to a change in strategy for the US market. As the US market is increasingly saturated with streaming options, growth is hard to come by. Instead, established streaming services are looking to reduce churn, and sports can be a valuable tool to meet those goals. Because sports are seasonal, they are a good tool to gain temporary, seasonal subscribers and keep existing subscribers engaged with new content.
In 2025, Tubi has the rights to stream the Super Bowl. With only 35% market share, versus Netflix’s 62%, Tubi still has room to grow in a crowded market. Expect Tubi to see immediate gains in user numbers in Q1, but the long-term impact of its investment in the Super Bowl is unknown.
Free streaming stalls its growth
FAST has typically seen consistent growth quarter-over-quarter, but for the first time in Q4’24, its size shrunk by 1%. In the US, 57% of households accesses a FAST service in a typical week, compared to 64% of paid, ad-supported and 72% of paid, ad-free.
In large part, the decline in FAST was driven by Freevee, Crackle, and Samsung TV Plus. Freevee, which has quietly been removed from the Prime Video platform but still has its own app in the app store, declined by just 2%. This indicates that Freevee’s user base face confusion over whether they are watching Freevee or Prime Video and still seek out Freevee content. Consumer perception of who owns what content is a constant challenge for streaming services. Freevee, which was formerly IMDbTV and is now fully under the Prime Video umbrella, is a great example of how consumer perception leads to this confusion in the streaming market.
Streamers have become increasingly demanding of the free services they use, holding them to the standards of content quality and quantity of a paid service. What was shown in Q4, with the category contraction driven primarily by just three services, shows us that streamers are willing to stop using a service even if its free, if it is not meeting their content needs. Services like Tubi, which is investing in live sports, are growing as they compete more closely with the content available on paid streaming. It is creating a tough landscape for FAST, which is expected to spend similarly on content as their paid streaming competitors without the additional revenue of paid subscriptions.
Hannah Avery, Consumer Insights Director, Kantar Worldpanel, said: “The expectations for success of streaming services are shifting. Streaming services more and more are defining success as stability rather than growth, but even stability requires great investment into the product and content offering. Consumers expect streaming services to offer more and more single live events, like we’ve seen with Netflix and will see with Tubi.”