DALLAS—While no one has knocked Netflix or the other well-established streaming platforms off their perch, the new players in the market have made moves and planted themselves firmly in the top 10 of Parks Associates’ U.S. subscription OTT video services rankings for the third quarter of 2020.
Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu continue to round out the top three services, per Parks’ report, but the list below them is now quite different. Disney+ comes in fourth, with HBO Max (sixth) and Apple TV+ (seventh) also among the year-old or less services earning spots. Parks reports that Peacock, another of the newest services, is making inroads with paid subscriptions, but its user base consists mainly of those accessing its free ad-supported tier.
“For many years, the Big 3 in OTT, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu, have ruled the top of the subscription-based OTT service space," said Steve Nason, research director, Parks Associates. "However, with newer entrants and expanded offerings, that trend may be about to change. The Big 3 and their main challengers have gone to market with varying content and distribution strategies, with the same goal in mind: reach elusive consumers with a compelling content offering and user experience to be a foundational essential service in an OTT subscriber's service stack."
Disney+ recently reported that it had more than 73 million subscribers just about a year after launching. However, Parks notes that Disney+ has remained in the fourth spot on this list since its launch, showing the challenge in overtaking any of the top three services.
In addition, HBO Max will also hope to boost its subscriber base with the launch of its service on Amazon Fire TV devices.
Here is the Parks’ complete top 10:
Sling TV and MLB.tv were knocked out of the top 10 in this most recent report.
For more information, visit www.parksassociates.com.
