Hulu Live TV ended the fourth calendar quarter of 2023, and the year as a whole, with 4.6 million subscribers. While this does represent a slight increase over the fourth calendar quarter of 2022, it marks no change over the previous quarter.
Considering Hulu started 2023 with around 4.5 million live TV subscribers, the service only managed to add roughly 100,000 subscribers over the past 12 months. This isn’t so much the case of so few being added, but more a matter of Hulu having to add back subscribers it lost during the year.
For example, Hulu dropped down to 4.4 million live TV subscribers at the end of calendar Q1 2023 (Disney’s Q2 FY23). This was then followed by a drop down to 4.3 million at the end of calendar Q2 2023 (Disney’s Q3 FY23). As a result, Hulu has added around 300,000 subscribers in the second half of this year, resulting in a calendar year-over-year gain of around 100,000.
In spite of the second half of the year looking far more positive than the first, all of those additions appear to have come during the third calendar (fourth fiscal) quarter. With Hulu Live TV having ended September 2023 with 4.6 million subscribers, the number of subscribers didn’t increase over the final three months of the year.
When looking at Hulu’s SVOD-only business, the service saw growth of just under 1.8 million subscribers during 2023. While Hulu started the year with 43.5 million basic Hulu subscribers, the service ended the calendar year with 45.1 million. Unlike Hulu Live TV, the 45.1 million was also an increase of 1.2 million on the 43.9 million basic Hulu subscribers reported at the end of the previous quarter.
Overall, this resulted in the total number of Hulu subscribers (basic Hulu + Live TV) increasing from 48.5 million to 49.7 million on a quarter-over-quarter basis, and increasing from 48 million to 49.7 million on a year-over-year basis.
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