AT&T's decision to release the new Wonder Woman film simultaneously online and in cinemas appears to have paid off for its HBO Max service. It added the most new SVoD subscribers in the US market in the fourth quarter of 2020, at just over 19 percent of all paid subscribers added during the period, Kantar reports. Disney+ took the top spot for the full year, accounting for 18.3 percent of new SVoD subscribers in the 12 months, and its series The Mandalorian was the top-rated content by SVoD subscribers.
The market researcher estimates there were 223 million SVOD subscriptions in the US in December 2020. With more services coming on the market, consumers are increasingly signing up for multiple services. The average US home had 3.5 video streaming subscriptions at the end of 2020, compared to 3.1 at the start of the year.
After HBO Max, Amazon's Prime Video attracted the most new subscribers in Q4, with an 18.2 percent share. Kantar said Amazon has helped by the surge in e-commerce, driving more people to sign up for a Prime subscription. Amazon was followed by Hulu with 13.7 percent of new subscribers in Q4, Disney+ at 13.0 percent, Netflix with 7.4 percent and Apple TV+ with 5.9 percent. Newcomer Peacock from NBCUniversal took an estimated 4.4 percent of new subscribers for its paid service, and Kantar estimates 35 percent of Peacock customers opt for the paid service rather than the free, ad-supported version.
Over four in ten (41%) of new HBO Max subscribers during the quarter cited specific content as their key motivator for signing up, an increase from 32 percent in the previous quarter. The 'Wonder Woman 1984' film was the key title for one in five of these new content-driven subscribers. The online release does not appear to have stopped them from also going to the cinema, as the same proportion of HBO Max subscribers went to the movie theatre in the fourth quarter as did in the third (15.3% Q4, 15.4% Q3), Kantar said.
Netflix accounted for the number two and three best-rated programmes, with 'The Crown' and 'The Queen's Gambit'. However, its share of new SVoD subscribers more than halved over the year, from 16.2 percent in Q1 to 7.4 percent in Q4.
Kantar's 'Entertainment on Demand' data is based on a longitudinal panel of 20,000 consumers and 2,500 new subscriber interviews each quarter.
