Stephen Curry and LeBron James
By ERIK GRUENWEDEL
Source: www.mediaplaynews.com, February 2021
Live sports remains a key driver in pay-TV as subscribers’ love for football, basketball, baseball and ice hockey outweighs dropping the more-expensive home entertainment distribution channel with over-the-top video. New research from Parks Associates finds 55% of pay-TV households in the U.S. report availability of live sports is important in their decision to keep their pay-TV service.
Major pay-TV operators Comcast Cable, AT&T U-verse, DirecTV, Disneh Network and Fios Video lost more than 5.6 million combined video subscribers in 2020. Charter Spectrum added 19,000 pay-TV subs.
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“The churn rate for pay-TV services continues to trend significantly lower than the rate for OTT services,” Steve Nason, research director of Parks Associates, said in a statement. “This is fortunate given the lack of live sports in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past year, churn rates for OTT and [onlione TV] services both declined as consumers turn more and more to online video sources for their entertainment.”
