How Much Demand for Live TV Streaming?

source: GlobalWedIndex

Some 11 percent  of all streamers pay for live streaming television, a study by Cogent Reports has found. That might be viewed as a data point suggesting there is relatively little interest in live video streaming. That might not be the case.

Potential demand for live video streaming is getting to be a tale of multiple markets. There is the traditional TV content market, but there also is a faster-growing live video content “in the context of social media use” segment of the market. It is easier to measure “demand” in the former segment, than in the latter segment.

In the traditional video content business, there are further nuances. There arguably is less demand for live news programming; much more demand for live sports programming and high demand for live streaming of blockbuster events (sports and entertainment events).

But much of the growth in live streaming has to do with social media usage, not traditional linear TV viewing.

In 2017, most live streaming arguably is in the context of social media, not paid streaming video.

These days, live video streaming is more often something that happens in the context of a person using social media, not a paid video streaming service.

So one danger when conducting market research is self-fulfilling hypotheses. If an existing market is quite large and established, while another is quite small and new, any survey of buying behavior is going to show that there is relatively low buying of products in the small market. Conversely, studies of buying behavior will show high activity in big market  products.

Also, if most of the activity in a market is not consumed on a for-fee, subscription basis, any measurement of “for fee” subscriptions is going to miss the total amount of activity.

“With the exception of sports and news, our research shows that viewing live content is not in high demand as it is currently offered,” say researchers at Cogent Reports.