YouTube TV claims it has 5M subs and 'trialers'

YouTube TV, the over-the-top TV service that launched in early 2017, claims it now has 5 million subscribers and "trialers" as of June 2022, a figure that provides only a hint at how many paid customers it has.

"Today, we're humbled that five million of you are currently on this journey with us," Christian Oestlien, VP of product management, YouTube and Connected TV, explained in this blog post.

Figure 1: YouTube TV debuted in February 2017 in a handful of major US markets and was available nationwide a couple of years later.
(Source: Seemanta Dutta/Alamy Stock Photo)

The last time YouTube TV released any subscriber data was in November 2020, when Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai disclosed on an earnings call that the service had more than 3 million paying subs. In the fall of 2021, LightShed Partners analyst Richard Greenfield surmised that YouTube TV had crossed the 4 million subscriber mark.

This latest customer milestone would seemingly put YouTube TV atop the heap of virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPDs), a group that includes Hulu (4.1 million subs at the end of Disney's fiscal Q2) and Dish Network-owned Sling TV (2.5 million subs at the end of Q1 2022).

Greenfield, an analyst who's been critical of the financial performance of vMVPDs such as FuboTV, seemed relatively bullish about YouTube TV with respect to the milestone and the product itself in a tweet:

Combo metric 'pretty useless'

However, not all analysts are willing to accept the number as-is. Dan Rayburn, an analyst who focuses on the streaming media market, noted on LinkedIn that it's difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison without a breakdown of how many of those 5 million are paying subs and how many merely took a free trial but didn't convert to a paid customer.

"The title is confusing as that's now how many have used or trialed the service 'in five years,' but rather how many are using the service, paid and free, as of June 2022. The numbers reported, as is, are pretty useless," Rayburn wrote.

YouTube TV, a service that has faced price hikes and carriage disputes that are typical in the playground of traditional pay-TV providers, has not yet disclosed how its 5 million milestone breaks down.

YouTube TV is currently offering a three-month promotional price of $54.99, and $64.99 per month thereafter.

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— Jeff Baumgartner, Senior Editor, Light Reading