Recent Market Statistics in UK’s Subscription TV Services

The average television viewing time for traditional TV and smart TV owners in the UK is 3 hours and 40 minutes a day on weekdays and nearly 5 hours a day during weekends. Market survey shows around 28 percent of UK households owning smart TV sets in 2016.
Most UK television viewers seem to have the best access to advanced technology among European viewers according to the Office of the Commissioner (OfCom). Viewers catch up on their favourite shows using various TV gadgets. In December 2015, free-to-air catch-up services was said to have been available to around 70% of UK’s TV viewers. Around 40% of UK households have TV’s connected to the Internet.

In another research by Strategy Analytics, around 17. 4 million Brits were subscribed to pay television services that same year. Sky and Virgin Media comprised 81% of the market share.

BT TV had 6% of the subscriptions, but its Ultra HD service and BT sport service was forecast to increase its share by 2017. Kantar’s research supports this and in fact, by mid-2016, BT doubled its shares (up by 7.8%) and effectively used its broadband base to cross-sell TV viewing services. An estimated 40% of TalkTalk subscribers were expected to jump ship BT after the data breach. Nearly 157,000 TalkTalk customers have been affected by the cyber-attack on the telecommunications firm in October 2015.

Over 80% UK adults use online service to watch TV programs or movies aired in the past weeks via catch-up services such as Sky-on-Demand, iPlayer, or ITV Hub.

Sky’s introduction of its latest-generation TV service, the Sky Q application helped boost its quarter on quarter growth in paid TV gains. The Pay TV provider has been leading the catch-up TV market as well and has expanded content by 50% since 2013.

Virgin Media’s continuous expansion of its cable service earned the company an average of 4 percent annual increase of new customer.