Telcos Grow VOD Revenue, Market Share

According to the NPD Group, in 2012 more than three-quarters of all transactional VOD movies were rented via cable and satellite TV services; however, telcos grew their share of the VOD-movie-rental market and earned more than twice the amount of movie-rental revenue per subscriber.Cable operators continued to control 56% of the overall $1.3 billion multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) transactional VOD-movie market, followed by satellite TV operators (27%), and telcos (18%) in 2012. Telcos, including Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-verse, grew their VOD-movie-rental share 4 percentage points during this time period, according to NPD's "2012 VideoWatch VOD Report." At the same time, cable operators' share declined 4 percentage points, and satellite operators' share increased 1 percentage point. NPD's measurement includes only movies for which a separate additional per-movie-rental fee is charged, and not, for example, movies downloaded as part of a pay TV subscription.Although Comcast and other cable operators lead in the overall number of subscribers, Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-verse also generated more annual VOD movie-rental revenue per subscriber. NPD estimates that in 2012 telcos earned average per-subscriber VOD-movie-rental revenue of $25.29, cable operators garnered $13.83 per subscriber, and DirectTV and DISH Network netted an average of $10.33.