“Stop us if you’ve heard this one before,” self-aware equity analyst Craig Moffett told investors Tuesday in his firm’s quarterly “Cord Cutting Monitor” report. “The first quarter was the worst ever for pay TV subscriber losses.”

True, erosion to the U.S. subscription linear video ecosystem accelerated to an all-time high of 12.3% from January – March. But that isn’t the only reason the first quarter stood out as being particularly bad for this declining business. 

For one, the MoffettNathanson equity analyst wrote, “even YouTube TV, the only real ‘winner’ thus far in linear video’s dismantling, posted its first-ever quarterly subscriber loss by our estimate, underscoring the growing seasonality of the increasingly sports-driven linear vMVPDs.”

With the NFL signing off in February, Moffett estimates that many users cancelled the very churn-able streaming service, resulting in an estimated loss of 150,000 YouTube TV subscribers. (Google/YouTube parent company Alphabet very seldomly releases subscriber numbers for YouTube TV.)

Virtual MVPD’s now control around 30% of U.S. pay TV subscribers, Moffett estimates, and will own a market share of around 50% by 2028 he predicts.