YouTube TV controls around 39% of the user base for U.S. virtual pay TV services, but only 26% of the 13.6 million vMVPD subscriptions, Omdia reports.
According to Sarah Henschel, principal analyst for the London-based research company, vMVPDs tend to skew much younger than traditional pay TV services, and the users tend to watch a lot more content they don't pay for -- three times as much, Omdia said.
And as this Omdia graphic indicates, there are, on average, around four users for each vMVPD subscription vs. only around two for each linear pay TV subscription.
And among these "over-subscribed" services, YouTube TV appears to be the leader.
"This over-indexing highlights that these consumers are content-hungry and are able to find the content they need — through paid means or otherwise," Henschel added.
Also notable: Omdia reported the size of the total U.S. vMVPD market to be 13.6 million subscribers large, about 11% of the overall pay TV base. Controlling 26% of 13.6 million paid users would put YouTube TV at around 3.53 million subscribers.
Google/Alphabet last publicly hinted at a subscriber benchmark for YouTube TV back in October 2020, touting "more than 3 million." Since then, analysts have postulated guesses -- some as high as 4 million.
Omdia also said that average monthly pricing for a vMVPD service in the U.S. in 2021 was $58.89 per month compared to $99.44 for traditional pay TV and $8.75 for SVOD.
The upward trajectory of vMVPD pricing continues to push consumers to cut the cord for good and seek only AVOD and SVOD replacements, the company said.
