Our beloved TV market in 2023

There is an awful lot going on in the TV market as viewing patterns are stabilising after peaking during the Pandemic. The good news is that UK households are still watching over 3.5 hours of TV per day and this has remained substantially flat over the last 8 years!

Live TV continues to see a decline in share to the benefit of VoD, but linear still represents over 60% of viewing making the offering of linear channels (Public Service Broadcasters above all) a must have for any credible TV platform.

New subscription on demand services keep hitting the market with circa 17m homes in the UK signed up to at least one of these services.

All content providers are reacting to the increased competitive pressure by re-evaluating their business models especially in the context of the IP revolution underway: dynamic advertising insertion, hybrid models of D2C and carriage, foray into Sport, emergence of FAST channels, in app super-aggregation of services, and new variants of freemium.

IP only homes are the big growth story and IP distribution will become the main means of access to content by 2027 overtaking DTT; traditional players are seeking to counter the growing direct consumption through Smart TVs by leveraging superior User Interfaces: Sky Glass and Stream, Virgin Stream and the Youview powered BT TV Box Pro and BT TV Box Mini are recent examples of launches in a space which will be the new battleground of the UI wars.

The need for user-friendly super-aggregation of free and pay, linear and on demand content is as relevant as ever! And YouView helpfully provides the software and the cloud services that power brilliant discovery and viewing experiences.

We are well positioned in this arena with our UIs reaching out to 2.4m homes in the UK and have the ambition to double our installed base over the next 3 years leveraging on the incredible assets that our shareholders bring to the table: content, IP expertise, audiences, data and connections with 18m homes across the UK.

Written by By Riccardo Balestiero