A new report published by Credit Suisse found that AT&T may be to blame for Pay TV’s horrible first quarter. The report also estimates that DirecTV and Dish will lose a combined 1 million subscribers next quarter.
AT&T Contributes Huge Losses to Pay TV’s Q1
Credit Suisse discovered that across AT&T’s services (DirecTV, DirecTV NOW, and U-Verse) the satellite giant lost an estimated 744,000 subscribers. Those losses made up 85% of the entire Pay TV industry losses reported last quarter.
And it’s only going to get worse. The report also estimates that DirecTV will make up 75% of the satellite subscriber losses for each of the next three quarters.
Although AT&T’s streaming service DirecTV NOW had seen some previous growth, it lost 83,000 subscribers in the first quarter. In fact, it was only online streaming service to lose any subscribers in Q1.
By comparison, Dish lost 259,000 subscribers last quarter. And Credit Suisse is expecting the company to lose fewer subscribers compared to last year: about 100,000 subscribers in Q3 and 128,000 in Q4.
The report states that these losses prove cord cutting is rapidly growing, and will only gain momentum as time goes on. What do you think? When did you cancel your Pay TV subscription? Let us know!
