According to Digital TV Research, North America will have 112 million OTT subscription VOD (SVOD) subscribers (for movie and TV services only - excluding sports, for example) by end-2016, up by 19 million on 2015. The total is forecast to climb to 138 million by 2021.
However, the research house expects only 117 million TV households by 2021, so the SVOD total would represent 104% of TV households.
Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV Research, said: "It is important to stress that these SVOD figures are gross - some homes take more than one SVOD platform, especially in the U.S."
The average SVOD subscriber in the United States is expected to pay for about 1.5 services. From the 127 million U.S. total expected in 2021, the research houset forecasts that 43 million will be secondary SVOD subscriptions. Putting it another way, there are expected to be 84 million primary SVOD users in the United States by 2021 - or 71% of TV households.
"Another important point is that our forecasts include Amazon Video - some other forecasts do not," Murray said. "Amazon Prime subscribers do not directly pay for Amazon Video. However, to give as full a picture of the sector as possible, we calculate that 60% of Amazon Prime subscribers watch Amazon Video. For these homes, we have devoted half the Amazon Prime fee to Amazon Video."
Applying this methodology, the number of U.S. Amazon Video subs is expected to grow from 30 million in 2015 to 49 million by 2021. Amazon Video is expected to start in Canada in 2017. Amazon Video is expected to have 51 million subscribers in North America by 2021, who are expected to generate revenues of $2.486 billion.
By way of comparison, Netflix is forecast to have 59 million paying SVOD subscribers in North America by 2021, up from 53 million at end-2016. The United States is expected to comprise 52 million of the 2021 total. Netflix's North American SVOD revenues are expected to increase from $5.358 billion in 2016 to $6.853 billion in 2021.