Hulu Live TV still has four million subscribers, although the live TV streaming service has lost some since the last time paying customer numbers were announced. In between the two quarterly releases, Hulu Live TV encountered a price increase, bringing the overall cost directly in line with YouTube TV.
Although arriving late to the market, Hulu Live TV quickly established itself as one of the leading services. In fact, for some time now, it has been the leading service overall. Hulu Live TV was confirmed to have passed the four million subscriber mark in October of 2020. To highlight the rate of growth, during the first quarter of 2020, Hulu Live TV had 3.2 million subscribers.
Today, The Walt Disney Company released its fiscal first quarter 2021 financial results. As part of the release, Disney confirmed Hulu Live TV now has exactly four million subscribers. For reference, when the company’s fiscal fourth quarter of 2020 results were announced, Hulu Live TV stood at 4.1 million subscribers. resulting in a quarter-over-quarter decline.
In spite of this drop, Hulu overall is up. At the end of the previous quarter, Hulu’s SVOD service stood at 32.5 million subscribers. The latest release confirms that number has now increased to 35.4 million. Overall, this has resulted in the total number of Hulu subscribers (SVOD and Live TV) climbing up from 36.6 million to 39.4 million subscribers.
Hulu feeling the price increase heat?
In reality, a drop from 4.1 to 4 million is not a major issue for Hulu. However, it is still notable as the drop also comes at a time when the cost of a Hulu Live TV subscription increased. Up until that point, Hulu had an advantage over YouTube TV. It was not only $10 cheaper, but also provided access to the $5.99 SVOD subscription at no additional cost. While the Hulu SVOD subscription still makes Hulu Live TV a cheaper option overall, that’s only if the subscriber is interested in Hulu’s catalog. Otherwise, with both priced at $64.99 per month, dollar for dollar YouTube TV might prove more appealing to some subscribers.
Of course, it is difficult to really see if any drop in Hulu Live TV subscribers is directly related to YouTube TV. While Google and YouTube’s parent company, Alphabet, did release its latest quarter results recently, there was no mention of YouTube TV’s current subscriber count. As a result, all that’s known about YouTube TV is that it had three million paying subscribers. However, that official number came through months ago and with no update since then, the state of play with YouTube TV remains unclear. As does whether any subscribers have recently made the switch to YouTube TV from Hulu Live TV.
Source: Disney
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