The U.S. linear pay TV market will shrink 26% by 2030, reaching only 60% of households compared to 81% today.
That’s the conclusion of research firm The Diffusion Group in its latest report, which analyzes the impact of virtual MVPD services including Sling TV, DirecTV Now and Hulu Live on the incumbent pay TV marketplace.
Over this nearly 12-year span, virtual pay TV services will grow their market share from a current level of 4% to around 14%, TDG predicts. Analysts have suggested that vMPVDs will collectively end 2017 with around 4 million U.S. customers.
But despite the growth of virtual services, the overall U.S. pay TV market is set to shrink by 7% over the span.
TDG believes that by 2030, 30 million U.S. households will have no live multichannel service of any kind, whether it be virtual or legacy.
“The question is no longer if the future of TV is an app, but how quickly and economically incumbents can adapt to this truth and transition to an all-broadband app-based live multichannel system,” said the report’s lead author, Joel Espelien, TDG senior analyst.