In April 2017, Google launched YouTube TV for the first time in a handful of markets in the United States. Today, the company revealed in a blog post that while the internet-based live TV service is still only available in the United States, it has surpassed 8 million paying subscribers.
As Variety magazine noted, this makes YouTube TV the largest internet pay-TV service by a huge margin, with prices starting at $72 per monthAt $99, the impact far exceeds that of the second-ranked Hulu Plus Live TV, which has only 4.3 million subscribers.
One of the biggest reasons for YouTube TV's growth is likely to be the addition of the NFL Sunday Pass service in the fall of 2023. The first season of this service has just ended, and it allows NFL Pro Football fans to ** all Sunday afternoon games. YouTube TV is also introducing a multi-view feature for sporting events like the NFL Sunday Ticket in 2023, where users can ** up to four games on screen at the same time.
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said in a blog post that more and more people are ** YouTube's overall content on big-screen TVs. He says 1 billion hours of YouTube content are being watched on TV every day. In addition, according to data provided by the ratings service Nielsen, YouTube has generated the most hours of streaming in the U.S. over the past 11 months.
Mohan also revealed that YouTube Shorts is a recently launched feature designed to compete with short** services like TikTok, which currently has more than 70 billion views per day. In addition, the number of YouTube channels offering short** services has increased by 50% over the past year.
Last week, Google revealed that the number of users of YouTube Music and YouTube Premium worldwide, including free trial users, has now surpassed 100 million. YouTube Music offers ad-free ** and ***, while YouTube Premium includes all the features of YouTube Music and ad-free**.