Streaming Video Services Market in the USA and Russia: Current Statement and Tendencies of Development

Streaming services are becoming more and more popular with the audience. In 2018, the number of subscribers of streaming video services in the United States exceeded the number of cable TV subscribers for the first time, according to the American Association of Film Companies. According to experts of the PWC consulting agency, the global streaming services market in the next 5 years will be the second in terms of average annual growth, second only to the virtual reality market, and in Russia this segment will be the fastest growing in the media market. The purpose of this work was to characterize the key stages of development, the current state and growth prospects of the streaming video services markets in the United States and Russia. Based on this research recommendations aimed to reduce the impact of factors that hinder development on the market were proposed. In the course of the work, it was concluded that there are only 2 barriers to development that are significant for the market - the presence of illegal services on the market and the low purchasing power of the population in Russia. Other barriers identified in expert interviews (for example, the lack of a culture of paid entertainment content usage; the high subjective price of content) are inherently derived from these two key barriers. The drivers of the development of services are real legislative actions to limit the activities of pirated services (financial and non-financial), as well as a sense of inclusion in the community; increasing the personal value of content; technological development of services for greater ease of use and the creation of unique, recognizable and meaningful content. The following recommendations were proposed to increase the growth rate of the streaming video services market in Russia: (a) Joint efforts to combat piracy. Educational activities to build awareness among citizens about the pricing of content, as well as the problems associated with the activities of pirates. b) Turning platforms into a community with the ability to enable and disable functionality. This can strengthen the connection between the user and the platform, which will lead to a decrease in the number of departures to competitors, and, as we assume, in general, can increase the number of subscriptions of a single user to various services. c) Personalizing purchases and providing a choice of different types of subscriptions in accordance with the level of personal benefit desired by the user (including video streaming in a comprehensive subscription with other types of content, a combined subscription to several services at once, and the ability to purchase individual content units in the A la carte system) d) State support for services in the form of tax breaks, subsidizing content, as well as creating conditions for preferential lending, as well as financial incentives for citizens who prefer legal resources, by the state and creating conditions for preferential access for those who cannot always financially afford such content (first of all, we are talking about preferential groups of citizens – schoolchildren, students, pensioners, large families, etc.). e) Content as the basis of competition. The creation of meaningful original content and its corresponding promotion should become the norm for the market in non-price competition. As part of the work, the definition of a streaming video service was formulated. For the first time, the market of streaming video services has been studied from the standpoint of the theory of industry markets. A new object has been introduced into scientific use - the market of streaming video services in Russia, as well as the periodization of the stages of development of streaming platforms. The work can be useful for industry practitioners. In addition, the developed recommendations can be used to modernize the legislative framework in the fight against piracy.