11% Of American Households Rely On Shared Video Streaming Accounts

Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Instant Video subscribers are generous when it comes to sharing their passwords. In a new study, Dallas-based research firm Parks Associates discovered that out of 57% of U.S. broadband homes which access streaming subscription services, 11% of these households use these services via someone else’s paid account.

Parks broke down the total 11% figure into smaller data points based on which streaming services had the most-shared accounts. Approximately 11% of Netflix users access the service through an account paid for by another user, while 10% of Hulu Plus users do the same. Only 5% of Amazon Prime users access Instant Video via a paid subscriber’s account.

Additionally, Parks noted how account sharing on video subscription services tends to occur in households with younger demographics. Out of the surveyed 18- to 24-year-old streaming service users, 22% of them access the over-the-top platform video using someone else’s account.

Parks’ research included subscription services not tied to pay-TV accounts, but did not cover authenticated apps for video services like HBO Go which do require a pay-TV subscription for use. The firm’s study was also conducted during Q3 of 2014, before either Dish’s Sling TV service or the HBO Now service launched.

“OTT video accounts for a disproportionate amount of content consumed when compared to expenditure—over one-third of video consumed per week is OTT, but it is only 9% of the household video budget,” said Brett Sappington, Director of Research at Parks, in the study. “Account sharing is part of the larger problem in monetizing the strong consumer demand for OTT content.”

Parks’ study is aptly timed to a changing entertainment consumption market. In addition to Sling TV and HBO Now, a variety of other providers have launched their own subscription services. At the same time, pay-TV subscriber counts are dropping. And for the first time in the history of the cable television industry, pay-TV providers lost subscribers in the first quarter of 2015.

You can read more of Parks Associates’ study on the firm’s blog.