Within two years the streaming revolution will claim a new milestone when Britons spend more on services such as Netflix and Disney+ than they do on traditional paid TV packages, according to a report by PwC.
In 2025, British consumers are forecast to spend £4.2bn on subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) services including Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and Apple TV+ to get their fill of content ranging from the Star Wars and Marvel franchises to Lord of the Rings (LOTR) spin-offs, comedies such as Ted Lasso and reality TV including Selling Sunset.
This compares with the £4.1bn that is predicted to be spent on TV subscriptions, from providers including Sky, Virgin Media, BT TV and TalkTalk, a tipping point that means it has taken just 13 years for streaming to eclipse traditional pay-TV since the change in viewing habits began with the arrival of Netflix in the UK in 2012.
“In 2025 it is forecast that SVoD will overtake TV subscriptions in terms of revenue reflecting a shift in audiences from linear [TV] to streaming,” said Dan Bunyan, a partner in PwC’s strategy team. “The major SvoD players continue to invest in content rights and original productions to maintain popularity with customers.”
Last week, Amazon UK revealed that it has doubled its investment in the UK, where it now makes shows including the LOTR prequel Rings of Power, while Netflix recently said it is spending about $1.5bn annually making shows and films in the UK.
PwC’s figures highlight the dramatic rise in popularity of services such as Netflix – as recently as 2018 consumers spent less than £1bn streaming subscriptions – as well as the plateau and forecast decline in the pay-TV subscriptions market.
In 2018, TV subscription revenues stood at £4.9bn. However, they peaked in 2022 and are predicted to have dropped to £4.1bn by 2027, at which point SVoD spend is forecast to have grown to £4.7bn.
Sky continues to diversify away from its traditional satellite TV business into areas including broadband, mobile, smart TVs and streaming through its own service Now TV as well as aggregating erstwhile rivals such as Netflix into its own bundles. Last week it launched a new smart camera allow views to watch TV shows together remotely or conduct Zoom video calls.
Last year, Comcast, which paid £32bn for Sky’s European business in 2018, wrote down its investment by $8.6bn (£6.8bn). The company is reportedly open to a sale of its Sky Deutschland business, with suitors including the German media group ProSiebenSat.1 mooted.
Sky is estimated to have 9.1 million pay-TV customers in the UK, down from 9.78m in 2018, according to analysts at Ampere.
The overall market for pay-TV subscribers in the UK is estimated to be 14.6m. The number of SVoD subscriptions in the UK is estimated to be almost 45m, with many homes taking multiple services.
