As more households trim their monthly entertainment budgets by cutting the cord and choosing on-demand streaming services, pay TV providers continue to see a decline in customers. Leichtman Research Group found that the largest pay TV providers in the US lost 1,895,646 video subscribers in Q1 2021.
The report shows that the top cable providers (including Comcast, Charter, Cox, Altice, Mediacom, Atlantic Broadband, and Cable One) lost 774,196 net video customers for the quarter. Other traditional services (AT&T Premium TV, Dish TV, Verizon FiOS, and Frontier were down 864,000 for the quarter. The total was rounded out by live TV streaming services. Hulu with Live, Sling TV, and fuboTV combined were down 257,450 for the quarter (though fuboTV along saw an increase of around 43,000.) Leichtman did not include YouTube TV or Philo as it didn’t have access to current subscriber numbers.
“Pay-TV net losses of about 1.9 million in 1Q 2021 were similar to the net losses in 1Q 2020,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. “Over the past year, top pay-TV providers had a net loss of about 4,790,000 subscribers, compared to a loss of about 5,125,000 over the prior year.”