Pay TV has been losing subscribers for years, but analysts at MoffettNathanson now see a possible floor. The firm projects the US pay-TV market could stabilize at more than 50 million subscribers by 2030, down from roughly 62 million today.
That forecast needs an important distinction. The 50 million figure covers the entire pay-TV market, including cable, satellite, telco TV and virtual providers such as YouTube TV. It does not mean traditional cable alone is expected to stop shrinking at 50 million subscribers.
The latest numbers also show why analysts think the decline may be slowing. US pay TV lost 885,000 subscribers in Q2 2026, compared with 1.34 million a year earlier, according to Light Reading's report on MoffettNathanson's latest Cord-Cutting Monitor.
What the 50 million pay-TV forecast actually counts
US pay TV ended Q2 2026 with 61.51 million subscribers:
27.5 million cable subscribers
21.42 million virtual MVPD subscribers
9.56 million satellite subscribers
3.01 million telco TV subscribers
MoffettNathanson expects those categories to look very different by 2030.
Virtual MVPDs are projected to represent 49% of the pay-TV market by then, compared with 51% for traditional providers. At the end of 2026, the firm expects the mix to remain much more heavily weighted toward traditional pay TV, at 62% traditional and 38% virtual.
That distinction explains the forecast better than the 50 million headline alone. MoffettNathanson is not predicting that cable stops losing subscribers. Its view is that growth from virtual services could eventually offset enough of the decline in traditional TV to create a floor for the combined market.
Analyst Craig Moffett also cautioned that the eventual floor could drift lower after 2030.
The forecast does not count every streaming service that carries live programming. Standalone products such as ESPN Unlimited or Fox One can attract customers who never had a traditional pay-TV bundle without necessarily appearing in the same subscriber totals.
Which part of pay TV is actually slowing down
Cable operators are losing customers more slowly than they were a year ago.
Cable providers shed about 445,000 subscribers in Q2, compared with 594,000 in the same quarter of 2025. The broader traditional pay-TV segment, including cable, satellite and telco providers, lost 953,000 subscribers, improved from 1.14 million a year earlier.
MoffettNathanson says the year-over-year decline rate for traditional pay TV improved to 9.2% from 11.1%. The firm has now recorded 10 consecutive quarters in which that rate of decline improved.
That is a slowdown, not a return to growth.
Satellite providers still lost 386,000 customers in Q2, while telco TV providers lost 112,000.
Virtual providers moved in the opposite direction after a weak first quarter. vMVPDs added about 68,000 subscribers in Q2, with MoffettNathanson estimating that YouTube TV gained 50,000.
That rebound matters to the 2030 forecast because the projected floor depends partly on virtual services eventually offsetting more of traditional TV's losses.
Sports keeps live TV valuable, but not necessarily cable
Live sports remains one of the strongest reasons consumers pay for live television.
The NFL averaged 18.7 million viewers per game during the 2025 regular season, up 10% from the previous year, according to NFL and Nielsen figures. That was the league's second-highest regular-season average since audience tracking began in 1988.
That demand does not belong exclusively to cable. NFL games now appear across broadcast TV, cable and streaming services.
Cable-specific consumer research still shows sports playing an important retention role. CableTV.com's 2026 State of TV report, based partly on a January survey of 1,000 US adults ages 18 to 65, found that 36% named live sports as the top reason for keeping cable. The same percentage said they had returned to cable specifically for sports.
Price remains a counterweight. CableTV.com puts the average cable bill at $147 per month and found that nearly half of cable subscribers would cancel if prices increased.
Consumers also appear increasingly interested in mixing live TV with streaming rather than choosing one format exclusively.
Parks Associates found that 27% of US internet households prefer a full live-TV bundle combined with streaming services, while another 24% prefer a smaller live-TV package paired with streaming.
Together, 51% prefer some combination of live television and on-demand streaming. Among current vMVPD subscribers, 68% find the idea of a cheaper skinny bundle appealing.
Charter shows how bundling can slow the decline
Spectrum operator Charter Communications is one of the strongest examples behind the argument that pay-TV losses can be slowed.
Charter lost only 21,000 video subscribers in Q2 2026, compared with 80,000 a year earlier. Its video customer base declined 0.8% year over year to 12.5 million.
Charter attributed the improvement to simplified pricing and packaging and the inclusion of streaming services in its larger TV packages.
Spectrum TV Select customers can now receive up to about $127 per month in advertised streaming-service retail value at no additional charge. The lineup includes services such as Disney+, Hulu, ESPN Unlimited, HBO Max, Paramount+, Peacock, AMC+, Fox One and Discovery+.
That is a stronger result than Charter reported earlier in the year. The company had lost 60,000 video subscribers in Q1 after adding 44,000 in Q4 2025.
Charter's results show that bundling traditional TV with streaming services can reduce churn at a large operator. They do not establish that every cable company will achieve the same result.
What the 2030 forecast means for cable
The most important part of MoffettNathanson's forecast is not that cable is expected to settle at 50 million subscribers.
It isn't.
The forecast says the combined US pay-TV market could find a floor above 50 million as virtual providers take a larger share and traditional providers continue shrinking more slowly.
By 2030, MoffettNathanson expects traditional and virtual providers to be almost evenly split. That would leave traditional cable, satellite and telco TV with a substantially smaller share of the market than they have today.
The boundaries are also becoming less clear. Traditional TV providers increasingly bundle streaming apps, while streaming services such as Peacock, Paramount+ and Fox One carry programming that once required a conventional television package.
That makes "cable versus streaming" a less useful dividing line than it was several years ago.
What subscribers should do with the forecast
A projected industry floor does not make an individual cable package a better or worse deal.
Start with the channels and services actually used in the household, particularly live sports and local stations that may be harder to replace. Then compare the full cable or live-TV price against the streaming services that would otherwise be needed separately.
For Spectrum customers, that calculation should include the streaming subscriptions bundled with the TV package rather than comparing the headline cable price with the price of one or two standalone apps.
Also account for equipment charges, taxes, promotional pricing and what happens to the bill after introductory discounts expire.
The pay-TV decline is clearly slowing. Q2 produced smaller losses for cable and traditional pay TV overall, virtual providers returned to modest growth, and Charter reduced its video losses substantially.
But the industry's possible 50 million floor is a forecast for the combined pay-TV market, not evidence that traditional cable has finished shrinking.
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