Hulu Live TV dropped to 3.7 million subscribers at the end of its fiscal third quarter in 2021, according to The Walt Disney Company’s latest quarterly earnings report. This marks the latest decline in subscribers for Hulu’s live TV service, although its subscribe base remains healthy overall.
Hulu launched its live TV service in 2017 and it quickly became a popular option. One of the benefits of Hulu’s approach was the combining of a live TV subscription with the basic Hulu plan, resulting in a much greater amount of content to stream. However, Hulu Live TV has encountered multiple price increases since then, with a subscription now costing a minimum of $64.99 per month.
Hulu had 3.7 million subscribers as of July 3, 2021, according to Disney’s Q3 results. This represents a 100,000 decrease compared to the 3.8 million the service had in April of this year, and a much greater drop compared to the four million that were using Hulu Live TV when the fist quarter results of 2021 were announced by Disney earlier in the year.
Live TV aside, Hulu saw an increase in subscribers overall with the SVOD side of the service increasing from 37.8 million in April to 39.1 million in July. This resulted in the overall number of SVOD and live TV subscribers increasing from 41.6 million to 42.8 million.
The fact that Hulu has lost live TV subscribers again is noteworthy as this was a service that appeared to be continually increasing its user base. However, the higher price compared to some other services may be having an impact. During the same previous quarter, the much cheaper Sling TV noted a subscriber increase up to 2.44 million. However, YouTube TV may also be having an impact, although it remains somewhat uncertain at the moment if that actually is the case.
The last time Google confirmed subscribers numbers, YouTube TV stood at just over three million. At the time, that was substantially below Hulu Live TV, but YouTube’s live TV service has been rolling out a number of new features and add-ons since then. Considering the base plans for the two services are priced exactly the same, it is possible some Hulu Live TV subscribers have switched over to YouTube TV, or opted for a cheaper service instead.
Source: Disney
Leave a Reply