British households have canceled a record number of video subscriptions as they curb non-essential spending in response to a tightening cost of living, fueling fears that the pandemic-fueled streaming boom is over.

In the first three months of this year, consumers left about 1.5 million video-on-demand accounts such as Disney Plus, Apple TV Plus and Now, according to analytics group Kantar.

While 58% of households retain at least one streaming service, down just 1.3% from the end of 2021, the termination shows that viewers have become pickier About subscribing to multiple platforms.

The desire to save money was the most important reason for programme cancellations, the researchers found, and young people were particularly wary of paying for TV on top of the £159 a year licence fee.

Dominic Sunnebo, Kantar’s director of global insights, said the findings were “sobering” for streaming providers. Streaming services must prove their worth to consumers “in a competitive market,” he said.

Families are looking for ways to cut their budgets to cope with rising bills. Soaring energy, clothing and food prices pushed inflation to a 30-year high in March, data from the Office for National Statistics showed last week.

Media investors are increasingly concerned that the rapid growth in global video streaming — buoyed by demand for home entertainment during the pandemic — has peaked.

Shares of Netflix, which is due to report first-quarter earnings on Tuesday, have fallen 43% so far this year amid disappointing global subscriber numbers.

Consumers are re-evaluating subscriptions in response to higher fees.Some suppliers have raised prices in markets including the UK, partly to compensate for rising labour costs and facility This makes TV and film production more expensive.

These include Netflix, which recently implemented a second round of UK price hikes in 18 months, raising the standard monthly subscription fee from £10 to £11.

At the same time, options for UK audiences are expanding. Recent launches include Peacock from Sky, which features content from NBCUniversal. Scandinavian streaming Viaplay is scheduled to launch in the UK this year.

Many consumers are still signing up for streaming services. Kantar’s research, based on interviews with 14,500 people, found that around 3% of UK households subscribed in the first quarter.

However, this was a marked slowdown from 4.2% in the same period a year ago.

Meanwhile, cancellations rose from 1.2 million a year ago and 1.04 million in the final three months of 2021.

After budget concerns, the most frequently cited reasons given by those who terminated their subscriptions were that they were not using them regularly and that the platform lacked new shows they wanted to watch.

The net effect was that the number of households with at least one paid subscription decreased by 215,000 compared to the previous quarter to 16.9 million.

Britbox, Apple TV Plus, and Discovery Plus had the highest churn rates—meaning they lost the most users.

Kantar said Disney Plus saw the biggest increase in churn. Its quarterly churn rate tripled from the previous quarter to 12%.

Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video had the lowest churn rates during the quarter. Kantar said it showed they were “the last ones to leave when families are forced to prioritize”.