Netflix doesn’t just enjoy a healthy subscriber lead on its competitors: according to new data released Tuesday by Nielsen, the streaming giant also pulls in far more viewers watching on TVs than any other streaming service.
In the U.S., Netflix accounts for 31% of all streaming from TVs, per Nielsen — putting it well ahead of YouTube, the next closest company, which makes up 21% of all TV streaming. Hulu comes in third, with 12%, and Amazon Prime Video followed with 8% of all TV streaming.
There is one caveat: Nielsen’s data covers the last three months of 2019, which coincided with the release of Disney+; a new version of Nielsen’s report, covering the first quarter of 2020, could show Disney grabbing a bigger slice of the pie. For right now, though, Disney+ falls into the 28% “other” category, which also includes streaming companies like Pluto TV and Tubi.
What may come as a bit of a surprise is that only 19% of all TV viewing in the U.S. stems from streaming, according to Nielsen.
Netflix’s strength when it comes to TV streaming shouldn’t come as a major shock, though, considering it has 61 million domestic subscribers. Hulu, for comparison, has 30 million, and Disney+ is at about 29 million.
“Direct-to-consumer streaming hasn’t just changed the way consumers engage with, choose, and pay for content. It has also upended the type of content they yearn for, lean into, and champion,” Nielsen SVP Peter Katsingris said in the report. “Streaming video and audio has altered deeply ingrained habits and helped prompt consumers to do something unfathomable just a few years ago–expand their time spent with media. With so much content available, consumers now spend about a day more per week engaged with it than they did just six years ago.”
With new services like HBO Max, NBCU’s Peacock and Quibi coming out later this year, Nielsen said it found little sign U.S. viewers were going to start cutting back on their streaming budget; 93% of people plan to either keep their streaming budget the same or increase it as more services come out, according to Nielsen.