New research data from Antenna not only reaffirms the power of NFL games to boost subscription rates for streaming services. It also suggests that a significant majority of those sign ups remain subscribed to the service in the weeks after the games.
The newly released Antenna data shows that the Super Bowl LVIII game between Kansas City and San Francisco, which was the most watched program in decades, brought in 3.4 million sign up to the Paramount_ streaming service over the Super Bowl weekend.
Paramount+ provided a free trial offer, and Antenna observed that 68%, or 2.3 million, of the Paramount) sign-ups came in through that promotion; the other 32%, or 1.1 million, signed-up as paid subscribers.
By way of comparison, using a comparable three-day window, Antenna estimated that sign-ups for Peacock’s AFC Wild Card Game were 3.0 million. Peacock did not offer a free trial to coincide with the AFC Wild Card Game, so all of those sign-ups were paid.
"While some may assume a majority of users who sign-up around tentpole events (like big NFL games) will quickly cancel, this isn’t borne out in the data," the researchers added in a blog post.
In the case of Peacock, by the end of February, nearly seven weeks after the AFC Wild Card Weekend, Antenna observed 29% of the AFC Wild Card sign-up cohort had canceled their subscription, meaning 71% remained subscribed. Peacock’s one month survival rate across all 2023 sign-ups was 78%.
For Paramount+, Antenna observed that at the end of February 65% of the Super Bowl LVIII sign up cohort either remained subscribed to their paid subscription or had converted their free trial to paid. Antenna’s initial Paramount+ estimate does not include iTunes distribution, which Antenna estimates was 21% of the Paramount sign-ups.
For more detailed information on Antenna’s methodology and definitions of core metrics, visit http://www.antenna.live/methodology.
