Telecom TV Services Increase Share of U.S. VOD-Movie-Rental Market

Monday, March 4th, 2013
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In 2012 more than three-quarters of all transactional video-on-demand (VOD) movies were rented via cable- and satellite-TV services; however, telecom operators grew their share of the VOD-movie-rental market and earned more than twice the amount of movie-rental revenue per subscriber

PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y. — According to The NPD Group, a global information company, cable-TV operators continued to control over half (56 percent) of the overall $1.3 billion multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) transactional-VOD-movie market, followed by satellite-TV operators (27 percent), and telecom operators (18 percent) in 2012. Telecom TV operators, including Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-verse, grew their VOD-movie-rental share 4 percentage points during this time period, according to NPD’s “2012 VideoWatch VOD Report.”

At the same time, cable operators’ share declined 4 percentage points, and satellite operators’ share increased 1 percentage point. It should be noted that NPD’s measurement includes only movies for which a separate additional per-movie-rental fee is charged, and not, for example, movies downloaded as part of a pay-TV subscription.

Telecom: AT&T, Verizon; Satellite: DISH Network, DIRECTV; Cable: Time Warner Cable (TWC), Comcast, Others

Although Comcast and other cable-TV operators enjoy a tremendous lead in the overall number of subscribers, Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-verse also generated more annual VOD movie-rental revenue per subscriber. NPD estimates that in 2012 telecoms earned average per-subscriber VOD-movie-rental revenue of $25.29, cable-TV operators garnered $13.83 per subscriber, and DirectTV and DISH Network netted an average of just $10.33.

“Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-verse still considerably lag cable operators in the number of service subscribers; however they are actually growing their share of the MPVD VOD-movie-rental market,” said Russ Crupnick, senior vice president of industry analysis for NPD. “Telecom operators are leading their competitors when it comes to earning additional revenue from VOD movie rentals.”

Data note: Derived from NPD’s “2012 VideoWatch VOD Report,” information in this press release reflects movie rental data collected in 2012 only relative to cable-TV operators, satellite-TV operators, and telecom operators; Internet VOD (iVOD) services were not included in this announcement, but are tracked by NPD as a separate category. NPD measures only those movies for which a separate additional per-movie fee is charged (and not, for example, movies included with subscriptions or from premium-on-demand channels). Subscriber volume was sourced from January through September 2012 data that is publicly available from the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA). All data is weighted and projected to be representative of the U.S. Internet population (age 13 and older).