In the UK, the lockdown period was a significant source of income for the biggest US streamers, according to a study released by media regulator Ofcom.
In particular, it appears that Netflix has about 13m subscribers with a growth of 13% from 2019, while Amazon has about 7.9m subscribers and has grown by 32%. Disney+, launched on March 24, is the one that has had the greatest impact with 16% of online subscribers, earning third place after Amazon (39%) and Netflix (45%). However, it seems that Disney + is supplementary to the two giants of streaming so far.
Although this growth in streamers is partly linked to the lockdown period, the majority of subscribers said they would like to keep the subscription even later.
As Yih-Choung Teh, director of strategy and research group at Ofcom said: “UK broadcasters face a tough advertising market, production challenges and financial uncertainty. So, they need to keep demonstrating that value in the face of intense competition from streaming services“.
However, the great growth of the streamers did not cause losses for public service broadcasters, including BBC, ITV, STV, Channel 4, Channel 5, which in fact achieved their highest combined monthly share of broadcast TV having become the best source of reliable news .
