Australia reaches 14 million pay TV subscribers

Over half the Australian population pays for TV or SVOD services, according to new research from market research company Roy Morgan.

The level of access has risen by 7.9% year-over-year to reach 13,975,000 Australians (of 24.5 million citizens in the country).

Netflix is the clear market leader with nearly 11.5 million Australians now having a Netflix subscription in their household, up by 17.6% on a year ago. Nine Entertainment Company-owned Stan is the leading Australian-owned SVOD with nearly 2.9 million subscribers, up by 43.2% on a year ago.

Other smaller Pay TV/SVOD services to have grown quickly over the past year include Amazon Prime Video (+130.7%), YouTube Premium (+37%) and Fetch (+20.9%).

Regionally, over 3.6 million people in New South Wales and 2.8 million in Victoria have access to Netflix, with penetration rates being at their highest in Queensland (57%) and Western Australia (60%)

Michele Levine, CEO Roy Morgan, said: “Over two-thirds of Australians now have access to Pay TV/SVOD services in their households as strong growth for services including Netflix, Stan, YouTube Premium, Fetch, Amazon Prime Video and new live-sport focused Kayo Sports has continued during 2019.

The competitive nature of the market is underlined when one considers there are powerful new players’ entering the global streaming video market such as Apple TV+ and Disney Plus looking to leverage off their existing user base of installed devices (Apple TV+) and TV/movie catalogues (Disney Plus) respectively.

Netflix has undoubtedly been a star performer since launching in Australia just over four years ago in a market with a proliferating array of choices for the consumer it will be more important than ever for existing and new streaming services to correctly identify which genres will appeal to the widest possible audience.”