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Amazon is cracking down on Prime account sharing. The retailer is ending its Prime Invitee program, which allowed members to share benefits outside of their households. The program will officially end on October 1. Amazon is relying on a tried-and-true tactic to boost memberships. While the retailer has several irons in the fire, including investments in rural delivery and grocery that it expects will increase Prime鈥檚 stickiness, it will take time for those initiatives to bear fruit. But an immediate account-sharing crackdown pays off right away.

On today's podcast episode, we discuss why households with no pay-TV (traditional or digital) will be the majority and if livestream shopping in America can become habitual. Tune in to the conversation with Senior Director of Podcasts and host Marcus Johnson, Principal Forecasting Writer Ethan Cramer-Flood, and Senior Director of Forecasting Oscar Orozco. Listen everywhere and watch on YouTube and Spotify.

With most of the US already watching, growth in overall OTT viewership has slowed to a crawl. But some platforms, formats, and service tiers are still booming, and digital pay TV is complicating the linear TV narrative.

CTV to continue strong US growth: Households using the format to more than double pay TV in 2024, aided by tech shifts.

Consolidation will also allow Disney to capture a larger share of the digital pay TV market. The deal will allow Fubo to package all of Disney鈥檚 broadcast and sports networks into its service, giving it access to popular content from ABC, ESPN, and more. We expect US digital pay TV households to steadily increase over the next few years, from 20.3 million in 2025 to 22.2 million in 2028.

Time spent with TV has been falling for years as time spent as time spent with streaming surges and more households cut pay TV subscriptions. Over 77% of the US population will regularly watch over-the-top video in 2025, surpassing traditional TV viewership.

There鈥檚 been a rapid expansion of ad inventory available for consumption on smart TVs as they鈥檝e become more common in the home and streaming viewership nears the levels of pay TV. Predictions. Non-pay TV households will approach parity with pay TV households. Thanks to smart TV connectivity, non-pay TV homes will account for 42.4% of Canadian households in 2024 and continue upward.

Pay TV households are opting for the myriad video options available. Fragmented viewership across a wider variety of digital services has reduced pay TV households. At 9.2 million this year, the household number is down 1.2 million from five years ago. That equates to 19.0 million viewers in 2023, down 2.6 million viewers from five years ago.

DirecTV signals a broader pay TV battle with Disney: The company filed an FCC complaint against Disney for anticompetitive practices regarding carriage fees.

DirecTV bends the knee to Disney: After a major blackout, the pay TV provider is offering a path to join Disney+ and Hulu.

Disney鈥檚 carriage fee dispute game plan: The company blocked access to ESPN and more for DirecTV customers, flexing its power over pay TV providers.

Currently, less than half of US households subscribe to traditional pay TV, while the number of CTV households has reached 113.1 million (85.3% of the population). In fact, by 2024, eMarketer expects CTV households in the US to more than double traditional pay TV households. Viewers are also spending more time with CTV than ever before.

Many of those viewers were once cable users, but thanks to the rise of CTV, we can expect cord-cutter households to outnumber traditional pay TV households by the end of this year. Part of what has accelerated that shift is the rise of lower cost (or free) ad-supported content for viewers to watch.

Household viewing continues its shift to digital. Our forecasts for viewing habits by household show important tipping points in the ongoing migration from traditional TV to digital alternatives. Less than half of US households now subscribe to traditional pay TV.

Household viewing continues its shift to digital. Our forecasts for viewing habits by household show important tipping points in the ongoing migration from traditional TV to digital alternatives. Less than half of US households now subscribe to traditional pay TV.

Fubo is launching Fubo Sports, a 鈥渟kinny鈥� standalone sports streaming bundle with a lower cost than its existing plans and pay TV competitors. The bundle offers access to more than 20 sports-focused channels, including ESPN Unlimited, per Variety. If Fubo leans into being a low-cost, high-intensity sports hub, it can carve out a profitable niche, even if it lags behind in subscriber count and scale. But without more exclusive rights or differentiation, Fubo Sports could risk being seen as a less complete version of other bundles.

We forecast that there will be 48.9 million US linear TV households this year, down from 68.5 million in 2020. In the UK, digital video viewership is rising steadily, expected to reach 56.7 million consumers in 2028.Linear鈥檚 precipitous decline in the US still represents tens of millions of consumers that marketers should attempt to reach.