15 million Americans could flock to disruptive live-TV packages from Hulu, YouTube, or even Amazon

The catalyst of this change will be new live-streaming TV packages like DirecTV Now, Sling TV, and YouTube TV, UBS analysts wrote in a recent note to clients.

The concept of these emerging services is pretty simple: You pay for a package of channels like you would in a cable or satellite TV bundle, but those channels are delivered over the internet to your smart TV, laptop, smartphone, and so on. The thinking is that these flexible packages will lure younger people into the pay-TV universe.

And UBS thinks it will work. The analysts wrote that over 15 million people will subscribe to streaming TV services by 2020, as players like Hulu (confirmed), Amazon (rumored), and Apple (very murky), jump into the market. That would mean about 13% of all US homes.

Here's a chart that shows how UBS thinks the market will grow over the next few years:

But here's a question: If these services will find such a huge audience in a few years, why haven't they taken off immediately?

UBS chalks it up to three factors limiting growth:

If this streaming-TV sea change does come, what will happen to the companies selling you pay-TV packages?

One big difference is that because of how aggressively these services are priced, the margins are razor-thin, especially compared to the fat margins of normal pay TV. That means if someone swaps a cable package for a streaming one, the cable company is going to lose some revenue — sometimes a lot. UBS says that cable companies will be able to offset some of that financial impact by charging customers for the data they are using to stream TV, since many are delivering internet too.

"These [streaming TV subscribers] will often come in at less than half the price of traditional service, but ... cable's broadband business will see upside given the broadband surcharge and potential speed migrations," UBS wrote. "In summary, while investors are concerned about the potential impact from new streaming TV services, we believe the financial impact on cable [companies] is manageable."

But that issue isn't so rosy for satellite TV providers, which UBS described as "challenged." There might be a potential escape valve for at least one: AT&T, which owns satellite provider DirecTV, plans to weather the storm by pushing for its upcoming 5G network to become a vehicle for delivering TV wireless. In that case, it would have the same data fee advantage cable companies have. But it's way too early to tell whether 5G will become the wireless TV juggernaut of AT&T's dreams.

15 million Americans could flock to disruptive live-TV packages from Hulu, YouTube, or even Amazon

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