For years now YouTube TV has been the largest live TV streaming service in the United States. Now it seems that smaller, less expensive streaming services that don’t focus on sports are seeing strong growth.
According to our summer 2024 survey of more than 1,000 Cord Cutters News readers, YouTube TV dominates the live TV streaming arena with 26.8% of readers subscribing to YouTube TV. In second place is Sling TV with 9.4% of cord cutters subscribing to their skinny bundle of channels.
There is a major change in third place with Frndly TV jumping from just 2.9% in the spring of 2024 to almost 9% in the summer. Philo also saw strong growth jumping up to 7.5% of our survey.
Here is a breakdown of the live TV streaming services results according to our readers.
- YouTube TV 26.8%
- Sling TV 9.4%
- Frndly 8.9%
- Philo 7.5%
- Hulu with Live TV 4.9%
- DIRECTV STREAM 4.4%
- Fubo 2.1%
Clearly, YouTube TV is connecting with cord cutters in a way that stands out. Yet many cord cutters do not subscribe to a live TV streaming service. According to our survey, 43.5% of our readers do not pay for one, which is a slight increase compared to the same period in 2023. This lines up with what the Leichtman Research Group found: almost 7 million Americans canceled a satellite or cable TV service in 2023 but only 1.9 million switched to a live TV streaming service.
What is most interesting here is seeing Philo and Frndly TV jump Hulu, DIRECTV STREAM, and Fubo to become the third and fourth most popular way for Americans to watch live TV. It seems they have found a strong following with their lineup of channels that for the most part do not include news or sports.
Of that number of new subscribers to a live TV streaming service, the majority picked YouTube TV. YouTube TV added 1.9 million subscribers in 2023. Hulu + Live TV added 100,000 and Fubo only added 173,000 subscribers. Sling TV lost subscribers in 2023.