ADDISON, Texas—Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime and a handful of other streaming services are household names, but according to a recent study by Parks Associates, there are nearly 300 OTT services currently available in the U.S.
Parks’ recent “OTT Video Market Tracker” covered up through the third quarter of 2020, finding that the number of OTT services has more than doubled since 2014. These services also appear to have a stronger footing in the market, as only six services have ceased operations in 2020, compared to 19 services in 2018.
This growing strength in OTT services certainly can be linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen viewership numbers and streaming hours increase, but as Parks points out, the lack of new movies in theaters is also giving a boost to OTT platforms.
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While many films, like the next James Bond title, “No Time to Die,” have pushed back their release dates for when theaters hopefully can reopen, other studios, like Disney, have decided to provide their films via their own streaming platforms.
“... Disney’s announcement to move the Pixar film ‘Soul’ to Disney+ shows studios are putting more emphasis on streaming as many theaters remain closed or at limited capacity,” said Steve Nason, research director, Parks Associates. “We could see studios who also own streaming services experiment more with different transactional and windowing options within their offerings, as Disney did with ‘Mulan’ on Disney+ in September.”
Parks Associates also identified the recent partnership between NBC and Roku for Peacock as an example of streaming services’ potential for growth.
For more information, visit www.parksassociates.com.
