TV Subscription Services Lose 800,000 Subscribers Due To Soaring Cost Of Living

Earlier this year, it was reported that Netflix had lost a record number of subscribers, partially due to suspending its service in Russia. Despite a net loss of 200,000 within the quarter up to April, at the time, Netflix’s chief financial officer, Spence Newman, said he had faith that things would pick back up.

“We're not expecting our revenue growth to reaccelerate before the end of the year, but we will grow revenue, and there will be paid net add growth,” he said at the time. “As we get to the back half of the year [...] we get further away from some of the big price increases, we get into a stronger seasonal period, so I just want to make sure that's understood as you think about the full year even though we're not providing full-year guidance.”

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Now though, as reported by The Guardian, it’s been revealed that almost 800,000 households in the UK cancelled their Netflix or Amazon Prime Video subscriptions between April and June. Prime Video saw the biggest losses, with a 589,000 drop (from 13.35 million to 12.76 million), while Netflix saw a loss of around 206,000 subscribed households (dropping from 17.29 million to 17.08 million). Now TV also lost 43,000 subscribed households.

The survey which uncovered this information was conducted by the Broadcast Audience Research Board (Barb), who believe that the rise in the cost of living in the UK has played a part in the drop-off.

“The numbers we report today show SVOD [subscription video-on-demand] services aren’t immune as households work hard to make ends meet,” chief executive of Barb, Justin Sampson said (via The Guardian). “We don’t ask households why they choose to add or drop subscriptions, although the sharp increase in energy prices in March/April must have been a catalyst for people to review all their monthly outgoings.”

Despite drops in some subscription services, the survey found that 91,000 UK households had subscribed to Disney+, and a further 43,000 to Apple TV+.