Disney+ biggest winner as New Zealand bucks lockdown easing trend

More than two-thirds of New Zealanders watch subscription TV each month.

According to new data from Roy Morgan, over 2.95 million people over the age of 14 in the country consume SVOD or pay TV services in an average month. Despite global trends seeing pay TV usage down following the easing of lockdown restrictions, total viewership of subscription TV in New Zealand has increased 3.4%year-over-year (99,000).

The report notes that Disney+ has been the big winner over the past year, adding 481,000 users (an increase of 62.8% year-over-year). The streamer now has a total base of 1.25 million monthly users in New Zealand, though it still remains some distance away from Netflix with 2.26 million (though it only grew by 4.7% over the year).

The second-largest video service in New Zealand is pay TV operator Sky TV (though it is worth noting that Sky New Zealand has no connection to Comcast-owned Sky Group). Sky has 1.39 million viewers (up by 5,000 year-over-year). This encompasses the long-running Sky TV, the newer Neon streaming service, and the Sky Sport Now streaming service (formerly known as FAN PASS) which now has over 210,000 viewers.

Other streaming services have also increased in the country over the past year, such as Amazon Prime Video, which now has 460,000 viewers, an increase of 166,000 (+56.6%) on the June quarter 2021. There are 629,000 New Zealanders now viewing one of multiple other services including Spark Sport, Apple TV+, YouTube Premium, Vodafone TV, Google Play and Tubi.

Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine says Disney+ has been the big winner in the New Zealand Subscription TV market over the last year growing it’s audience by over 60% to well over 1.2 million viewers despite most pandemic related restrictions being relaxed. The latest data from Roy Morgan shows that well over 2.9 million New Zealanders (71% of the population) now watch Subscription TV in an average four weeks. This represents an increase of 3.4% viewers from a year ago but importantly there was growth from a range of services.”