40% of Pay TV Subscribers Could Be Next to Cut the Cord, Research Shows

According to new research from analyst firm MoffettNathanson, 40% of current pay TV subscribers could join the millions of households that have cut the cord this year. That report points out that while 60% of those paying for a cable subscription to watch sports are likely to keep their subscription, the other 40% could be the next to drop cable in favor of cord cutting.

We saw huge losses across the board for cable companies in the third quarter of this year, with AT&T alone losing 1.358 million subscribers. The company has commented that they’re only interested in profitable customers, saying “customers rolling off promotional discounts, programmer disputes and competition as well as lower gross adds due to the continued focus on adding higher value customers.”

MoffettNathanson warned that this strategy of focusing only on profitable customers could cause even greater losses as we go into 2020. However, the analyst firm says that subscriber losses are likely to slow down by mid-year.

“In addition, as each cable company continues pushing Flex and other OTT products to their customer base, cord cutting becomes ever easier,” analyst Michael Nathanson wrote. “This could add further pressure to the pay TV ecosystem and keep the rate of cord cutting elevated in 2020.”

Fierce Video shared an estimation from UBS of cable subscriber losses totaling 6.2 million in 2020, compared to the estimated 6.4 million from this year.

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