LOS ANGELES—With content being a central factor in the success of streaming services, new research from Parrot Analytics shows that the TV series owned by the various operations of the Walt Disney Company have the largest share of audience demand on streaming platforms.
The new Q3, 2021 data shows Disney’s content in the lead, with a 20.1% corporate demand share, followed by ViacomCBS (13.1%), WarnerMedia (12.1%), NBCUniversal (10.6%), Netflix (7.7%), Discovery (7.1%) and other players (29.2%).
The Corporate Demand Share, Parrot said, is really a look at how the top media companies can do long term if they are willing and able to consolidate their original content’s availability onto their own platforms.
But Netflix leads the pack for the U.S. demand for series content, regardless of owner, on an SVOD platform, at 21.3%, followed by Hulu (19.1%), HBO Max (11.3%), Prime Video (9.5%), discovery+ (6.9%), Peacock (6.5%) and Disney+ (5.7%).
And among the all digital originals in Q3, 2021, regardless of corporate owner, Netflix has an even bigger lead at 43.7%, followed by Disney+ (8.9%), Prime Video (8.6%) and Hulu (7.2%).
Parrot Analytics noted that Paramount+ lags in the competition for digital original demand. While its 3.9% share was an improvement from Q2 (3.4%), it was not nearly enough to catch up with the bigger major streamers.
The researchers also explained that Paramount+ (formerly CBS All Access) has existed far longer than Disney+, Apple TV+, or HBO Max, and yet it has been surpassed in original demand share by all of these streamers over the past two years.
The researchers explain Paramount+’s low market share by noting that “ViacomCBS has decided to go for guaranteed revenue now by licensing out its most in-demand series - such as Criminal Minds, NCIS, Shameless, and Spongebob Squarepants - to other streaming platforms.”
“Demand for original and exclusively licensed content is a key leading indicator of subscriber growth for SVOD platforms,” the company said. “In order to compete in the streaming game long term, ViacomCBS must prioritize clawing back the programming it is licensing out and placing it exclusively on Paramount+ or Showtime, or a combination thereof.”
