News & Views

Barb, the industry’s standard for understanding what people watch, has released data from its Establishment Survey showing that 20.1m UK homes (67.5%) had access to a subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service in Q1 2025. This is a slight increase from 20m UK homes in Q4 2024.

The service-level subscriptions data are as follows:

• Netflix: 17.4m UK homes (59.2%) had access to Netflix in Q1 2025, up from 17.1m in Q4 2024. In Q1 2025, 28% of Netflix homes were on its ad tier: 4.8m UK homes (16.4%), slightly up from 4.7m in Q4 2024.

• Amazon Prime Video: 13.4m UK homes (45.7%) had access to Amazon Prime Video in Q1 2025, slightly up from 13.3m in Q4 2024. Due to a different approach to moving homes to its ad tier, in Q1 2025, 87% of Amazon Prime Video homes were on its ad tier: 11.7m UK homes (39.9%), slightly up from 11.6m in Q4 2024.

• Disney+: 7.3m UK homes (24.8%) had access to Disney+ in Q1 2025, down from 7.6m in Q4 2024. In Q1 2025, 23% of Disney+ homes were on its ad tier: 1.7m UK homes (5.8%), up from 1.5m in Q4 2024.

• Discovery+: 3.1m UK homes (10.6%) had access to Discovery+ in Q1, level with Q4 2024.

• Paramount+: 3.1m UK homes (10.5%) had access to Paramount+ in Q1 2025, up from 2.7m in Q4 2024.

• Apple TV+: 2.7m UK homes (9.1%) had access to Apple TV+ in Q1 2025, slightly up from 2.6m in Q4 2024.

• NOW: 1.8m UK homes (6.2%) had access to NOW in Q1, down from 2m in Q4 2024.

Doug Whelpdale, Head of Insight at Barb said:

“20.1m UK homes accessed at least one pure-play VOD service in Q1 2025, showing continued stability in the market. The number of homes with two or more services grew for the first time since Q2 2024, reaching a new high watermark of almost 14.1m homes.

“Paramount+ was the service with the largest growth in the absolute number of homes, adding 430k over the quarter to stand +16% on Q4 2024 and +19% on Q1 2024. The latest series of 1923 was a notable content release for the service in Q1, but another factor may be the release of Yellowstone series 1-4 on Netflix at the end of January. During Q1, series five of Yellowstone accounts for five of the top ten most-viewed programmes on Paramount+ that were not new releases. Potentially those viewing on Netflix went on to join Paramount+ to find out what happens at the end of the series.”

Streaming services with a household penetration of more than 5% are reported.

Caution should be applied when comparing Barb’s sample-based numbers to audited numbers published by the SVOD services. Respondent recall of access to these services is subject to some uncertainty – this could occur where the respondent is not the subscriber in the household, or the service is provided in a package with other services.