More UK homes had access to a subscription VOD (SVOD) service in Q3, reaching 21m from 20.7m in Q2, according to Barb’s latest Establishment Survey.
Meanwhile, the number of homes with two or more SVOD services rose by almost 600,000 to 15.4m.
The UK’s top three SVOD platforms all experienced an increase in subscriptions during the quarter.
Netflix was in 18.3m households, up from 18m in Q2, accounting for 61% of UK homes. Of these, 44% were in the ad tier (8.1m), up from 41% in the previous quarter.
Amazon Prime Video was in 14.3m homes, up from 13.6m in Q2. This accounted for 48% of households.
Since Amazon defaults users to its ad tier, penetration is unsurprisingly high: 89% of Prime Video homes (12.7m) were on this tier in Q3.
Third-largest SVOD service Disney was in 9m homes, up marginally from 8.9m in Q2. Of these, 43% (3.9m) were on its ad tier.
The only other service to report an increase was Apple TV+, which was in 3.1m homes in Q3, up from 2.8m in Q2.
Elsewhere, HBO Max was included in the Establishment Survey for the first time. Barb reported 3.1m homes had access to the service in Q3 (10% of homes).
Doug Whelpdale, head of insight at Barb, noted that this figure is on a par with Disney+ when it joined the Establishment Survey in Q3 2020.
“Disney+ surpassed 9m homes for the first time this quarter — something for HBO Max to aim for over the next six years,” he added.
Paramount+ and Now both saw flat growth in Q3, at 4m and 2m respectively. Discovery+ saw a marginal decline at 3.6m from 3.7m previously.
Earlier this week, Skydance CEO David Ellison confirmed the company would bundle HBO Max and Paramount+ together by “early 2027”.
