Ahead of Q4 earnings next week, AT&T filed an SEC document Friday showing that it added more than 200,000 video subs that were “entirely driven” by DirecTV Now, the OTT-TV service that was launched in November.
According to the 8-K filing, spotted by Variety, that video sub figure includes only paying customers. DirecTV Now offers a seven-day free trial to customers who are new to the service.
The addition of DirecTV Now appears to be giving AT&T’s video subscriber line item a bump in the early going. AT&T shed 3,000 video subs in Q3 2016 via a loss of 326,000 U-verse TV customers alongside a gain of 323,000 DirecTV satellite TV subs.
Friday’s disclosure from AT&T comes the day after Dan Rayburn, executive VP for StreamingMedia.com and principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan, reported findings that DirecTV Now has been peaking at about 35,000 simultaneous viewers and surmising that total sub numbers would be in the neighborhood of about 140,000 based on an industry average that about 25% of users are streaming from the service at any given time.
