Antenna: bundles make up 33% of new major streaming service subscriptions in the US, and 28% of all subscriptions, up from just 10% of new subscriptions in 2024
Warner Bros. and Disney have been fierce rivals for decades. But like other entertainment companies, they both struggled …
Context & Ripple Effects
Earlier Antenna coverage showed a fragmented streaming market: households added more services, while a substantial share of users also canceled multiple services over a two-year period. That combination made standalone subscriptions easier to rotate in and out of.
The shift toward cheaper ad-supported plans had already shown that price and retention were becoming as important as content differentiation. The new bundle data indicates that packaging is becoming another central retention tool.
First-order effects
- Major streaming services gain a more meaningful acquisition channel through bundles, which now account for a material share of both new and existing US subscriptions.
- Disney and Warner Bros., despite being long-time entertainment rivals, have stronger incentives to treat distribution partnerships as a way to reduce friction for customers maintaining multiple services.
Second-order effects
- Standalone services face greater pressure to match bundle value through lower-priced tiers, promotional offers, or their own packaging partnerships, particularly for price-sensitive subscribers.
- Bundles can make churn less visible at the individual-service level: customers may keep a service because it is embedded in a package even when they would not renew it separately.
Third-order effects
- If bundle adoption continues, streaming competition may shift further from winning individual monthly sign-ups to controlling the consumer package, including its billing relationship, price point, and advertising inventory.
- The market could increasingly resemble a re-bundled version of pay TV, though the available evidence does not establish whether bundles will durably reduce total household cancellations or merely change how subscribers switch services.
The trend: Streaming is moving from an era of proliferating standalone apps toward re-aggregation around lower-cost, retention-oriented bundles and ad-supported tiers.