The situation of American streamers is worrying the streaming world as fears that Netflix will drag down the entire market are starting to be taken seriously. As proof, the reaction of investors. The latter moderately appreciated Netflix’s brake on the recruitment of new subscribers. Morality: stock market prices have collapsed and hence the market capitalization of companies.
Thus, since the beginning of the year, Netflix has lost almost 70% of its value, while Disney has fallen by 34%, Comcast by 21% and Warner by 20%. Some funds have even left Netflix with a crash and a loss and small shareholders have filed a complaint against the Los Gatos firm, accusing it of having misled them on the evolution of the subscriber portfolio.
While Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers, WarnerBros. Discovery gained 3 million with HBO Max and HBO, Paramount Global 6.8 million across all its services with Paramount+ as the lead service, and Comcast added 4 million paying subscribers to its Peacock service which now has 13 million.
The market is therefore wondering about the prospects for the SVOD market, which must now deal with several sources of subscriber flight: account sharing, the phenomenon of “churn and return” often linked to the double effect of disappointing programming and a rise in prices, but above all the rise in power of free offers with AVOD and the FAST channels.
The publication of the accounts of Disney+, Netflix’s main paid competitor, will therefore provide analysts with very important information on the ability of the SVOD market to withstand a situation which, according to some observers, could turn into a rout. A judgment to be weighed because the number of SVOD subscribers should continue to grow according to forecasts by Digital TV Research, which estimates that the number of subscribers in Western Europe should reach 258 million in 2027 against 164 million at the end of 2021.