Over 50% of Australia’s adults are paying for subscription video

Source: “Australian SVOD Market” report by AMPD Research, a subsidiary of Media Partners Asia

Methodology: The research involved an interactive online survey of 2,100 Australian internet users aged 15+ and used the tool of net promoter score (NPS) to gauge customer loyalty.

Findings:

• Paying for streaming video is becoming mainstream behaviour in Australia, with 52% of under 45s paying for video streaming services, while take-up among those over 45 is around 48%.
• The average subscribing household pays A$35.30 (US$24.86) per month for 1.9 streaming video-on-demand (SVOD) services, with the average viewer watching almost 10 hours per week of TV series and movies alone.
• Netflix leads the market with 5.3 million paying accounts, followed by Stan with close to 1.4 million. YouTube Premium comes in third place with just over a million paying subs.
• The vast majority—75% of respondents—want to see SVOD platforms carry more locally produced programming, while more US and UK content is also widely sought after.
• Sports and kids are likely to be key SVOD battlegrounds in the future, especially as pressure rises on conventional pay-TV packaging and pricing.

Net promoter scores by service: top five performing SVOD services and means for all services

"On the whole, viewers in Australia are positive about subscription-based video," Anthony Dobson, managing director of AMPD Research, said in the report.

Netflix remains the service to beat with an impressive NPS score of 41. Netflix also recorded the highest average viewing time for a non-sports service as well as the largest paying base and share of revenue among all SVOD services in Australia.

“Competition for spend and viewing time is only likely to increase, driven by rising investment in original content as well as access to local and international sports,” he said. “At the same time, Disney’s upcoming streaming service Disney+ will likely arrive in Australia sooner rather than later as part of its global rollout, undoubtedly becoming a key player in the Australian market,” he added.

Share of SVOD household spend by service