Business :
Leichtman Research Group, Inc. (LRG) has just revealed the figures for the main American telecom operators and Pay TV providers at the end of 2022.
Major pay-TV providers lost approximately 5.9 million subscribers in 2022. LRG says net losses in 2022 were 1.2 million subscribers higher than in 2021 (4.7 million).
The American Pay TV landscape breaks down into 3 major poles for a total of 70.2 million subscribers:
- The first 7 cable companies have 37.8 million subscribers (3.5 million subscribers lost in 2022 against 2.7 million in 2021), including Comcast, Charter, Cox, Altice, Mediacom, Breezeline and Cable One.
- Traditional services which are at the head of 24.1 million subscribers (2.7 million lost in 2022 against 2.9 million in 2021): DirectTV, DishTV, VerizonFIOS and Frontier.
- Virtual pay TV services (vMVPD) which have 8.3 million subscribers (gain 371,000 subscribers in 2022), including Hulu, SlingTV and fuboTV.
Proof that cord-cutting is still very dynamic across the Atlantic, pay-TV providers have gone from 95.5 million subscribers at the end of 2012 to 70.2 million in 2022, i.e. a net loss of 25 million subscribers in a decade, reflecting the profound change in the television market.
For some of these players, the losses observed on the Pay TV side are offset by the gains in very high speed subscribers.
The main American telecom operators gained 3.5 million very high speed subscribers in 2022. However, the growth in 2022 is slightly lower than that of 2021 which was 3.75 million new subscribers.
The market is estimated by LRG at around 110.5 million subscribers, made up of 3 distinct types of players:
- Cable operators, the very ones who lost 3.5 million Pay TV subscribers in 2022, are at the head of 75.6 million subscribers, posting a gain of 517,000 subscribers
- Traditional telecom operators (wired) which have 30.8 million subscribers and who lose 181,000 subscribers in 2022, among which we find AT&T and Verizon
- Finally, very high-speed fixed operators who have 4.1 million subscribers and who gained 3.1 million in 2022, thanks to T-Mobile and Verizon, against 730,000 in 2021.
LRG mentions that wireline carriers saw about 2.4 million net additions via fiber in 2022, offset by about 2.6 million non-fiber net losses.
