Google first launched YouTube TV in a few limited markets in the US in April 2017. Today, the company revealed in a blog post that the internet-based live TV service, which is still only available in the US, has now exceeded 8 million paid subscribers.
As Variety points out, that makes YouTube TV the biggest such internet-based paid TV service by a huge margin. The service, with a starting price of $72.99 a month, is well ahead of the second place Hulu Plus Live TV, which only has 4.3 million subscribers.
It"s likely that one of the biggest reasons for YouTube TV"s growth was the addition of NFL Sunday Ticket in the fall of 2023. The service just ended its first season, which lets NFL pro football fans watch all of the Sunday afternoon games. YouTube TV also introduced its multiview feature for sports events like NFL Sunday Ticket in 2023, which lets subscribers watch as many as four games at once on screen.
In his blog post, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan stated that more and more people are watching content on YouTube as a whole on big-screen TVs. He stated that 1 billion hours of YouTube content are viewed on TVs every single day. In addition, according to numbers provided by the ratings service Nielsen, YouTube has generated the most watch time among streaming services in the US for the last 11 months.
Mohan also revealed that YouTube Shorts, a more recent feature designed to compete with short-form video services like TikTok, is now generating over 70 billion views per day. Also, the number of YouTube channels that offer Shorts has increased by 50 percent in the past year.
Last week, Google revealed that the number of YouTube Music and YouTube Premium users have now exceeded 100 million subscribers, including free trials, worldwide. YouTube Music offers ad-free music and music videos, while YouTube Premium includes the features of YouTube Music plus ad-free videos as a whole.