News & Views

Barb, the industry’s standard for understanding what people watch, has released data from its Establishment Survey showing that 20m UK homes (68.7%) had access to a subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service in Q2 2024. This is a slight increase from 19.5m UK homes (67.9%) in Q1, and the first time more than 20m UK homes report having access to an SVOD service.

Barb has again shared an advertising tier estimate for Netflix, alongside a first figure for those with access to the Disney+ ad tier.

The number of UK homes on the Netflix ad tier continues to build, reaching 2.78m (9.5%) from 2.12m (7.4%) in Q1. The Disney+ ad tier, in its eighth month by the end of Q2, averaged in 820k homes across the quarter.

Netflix: 17.1m UK homes (58.6%) had access to Netflix in Q2 2024 up from 16.7m (58%) in Q1.

Amazon Prime Video: 13.7m UK homes (46.7%) had access to Amazon Prime Video in Q2 up from 13m (45.3%) in Q1.

Disney+: 7.6m UK homes (26.1%) had access to Disney+ in Q2 flat compared to Q1.

Apple TV+: 2.4m UK homes (8.3%) had access to Apple TV+ in Q2 flat compared to Q1.

Paramount+: 2.8m UK homes (9.7%) had access to Paramount+ in Q2 up from 2.6m (9.1%) in Q1.

Discovery+: 3.2m UK homes (11.1%) had access to Discovery+ in Q2, up fractionally from 3.1m (10.9%) in Q1.

NOW: 1.98m UK homes (6.8%) had access to NOW in Q2, up from 1.82m (6.3%) in Q1.

Doug Whelpdale, Head of Insight at Barb said:

“More than 20m UK homes have access to an SVOD service for the first time since Barb began collecting data in 2014. This figure is 1.25m higher than in Q2 2023 – a 6.6% increase. The number of homes with two or more services also tipped to 14m (48%) for the first time.

Building on strong growth in Q1 all services on the tracker saw a quarterly increase in the number of homes with access. Netflix added just under 0.9m homes since Q4 2023, while Amazon gained almost 1.3m in the first half of 2024.

The challenge will be to maintain this momentum. Q3 2024 will be a key test to see if the pure-play VOD services can avoid the plateaus of the last three years, but 2024 appears to be going well for these services so far.”

Barb’s viewing data shows how new titles and library programming combine to drive time spent with these streaming services.

Streaming services with a household penetration of more than 5% are reported. Caution should be applied when comparing Barb’s sample-based numbers to audited numbers published by the SVOD services. Respondent recall of access to these services is subject to some uncertainty – this could occur where the respondent is not the subscriber in the household, or the service is provided in a package with other services.