Proactive Investors - UK households upped their spending on paid-content streaming in the final quarter of 2022, but market researcher Kantar said it is unclear how sustained this revival will be.
Kantar reported a 300,000 increase in new subscriptions compared with the previous quarter, but this was not enough to recoup losses earlier in the year.
Paid-for video streaming subscriptions over the whole of 2022 fell by two million to 28.5 mln, Kantar said.
"Brits' love of streaming remains as strong as ever, but the effect of high inflation meant consumers were forced to make difficult choices to balance their finances," said Dominic Sunnebo, Kantar's global director of entertainment on demand.
"That financial pressure increasingly meant cutting back on video streaming subscriptions, particularly where households often had three or more different services in the same household."
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) Prime, AppleTV+ and Paramount+ did well in the last three months of 2022, but Kantar said this reflected "short-term" demand in the run-up to Christmas.
In trading updates, sector leaders Nextflx and Disney both also reported a surge in subscribers in their third quarter, though Kantar said growth at Disney+ in the UK was slowing.
The platform accounted for 11.7% of all new subscribers in the last three months of 2022 - down from 19.3% in the same period a year earlier.
Kantar also questioned the longevity of the recent UK sign-ups with around 10% of new UK subscribers intending to cancel this quarter added the researcher.
Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) has also put its prices up and is cracking down on password sharing.