If the video streaming was seen by many actors and studios as a new El Dorado, the past year has seen all platforms come back to reality.
During the pandemic, things were understood: the future of television and cinema was to be found in streaming. Not a single production company or tech giant could ignore the sector and launch its own platform hoping to make its mark alongside the giants Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
However, 2022 has showered the general euphoria and the various streaming services must find new ways to prosper, while reducing their budgets.
Subscribers who are expensive and bring in too little
The first warning signal given this year comes from the biggest player in SVOD. By unveiling these financial results in April 2022 for the first quarter of the year, Netflix announced the first drop in subscribers with 200,000 users lost in the wild. This pales in comparison to the platform’s 220 million subscribers, but this first sign of a slowdown was enough to alert investors and analysts.
The next three months weren’t much better with a drop of one million subscribers. Although the Los Gatos firm initially justified these poor figures by stopping its services in Russia, Netflix is also penalized by the technique of account sharing, which allows many users to access its services without pay every penny.
If Amazon does not communicate any figures, Disney + has also suffered during this year 2022. On paper, all the lights are green for the studio with big ears, which has recruited 46.1 million subscribers for its platform alone. . Including Hulu and ESPN in the United States, as well as Hotstar in India, Disney now has slightly more total subscribers than Netflix in just three years of existence. A real feat.
However, the group is suffering with a 40% drop in its share price. If Mickey and his friends recruit at all costs, the costs of acquiring rights and production soar with nearly 1.5 billion in debt for the third quarter of the year. In short, the platform is costing more and more to the studio, which does not know how to replenish the coffers despite a recent increase in subscriptions.
The return to old recipes (advertising) to improve things
In 2022, streaming platforms announced a brutal throwback for the consumer: the return of good old advertising.
Netflix will have been the first to draw a new offer, at €5.99/month, which incorporates before and during programs up to four minutes of ads, slightly less than linear television. Alas, the big N service renounces its principles in a few months to offer a more accessible offer and maintain its growth. Netflix has also indicated that it wants to end account sharing and is quietly testing new formulas to spare its users while increasing its revenue per subscriber.
Disney will also take the plunge in the coming weeks and offer an ad-supported offer at a softer price. Initially expected for the end of the year in France, it will probably be necessary to wait until 2023 to find out more. In the meantime, the group has brutally thanked Bob Chapek, its CEO who arrived only three years earlier, on November 21. Judged responsible for this financial rout, because of a strategy focused exclusively on streaming, Disney recalled Bob Iger, its former leader, expected like the messiah to straighten the bar and the accounts of the American group.
The two groups will also save money by reducing the sails on many expensive and riskier projects. The objective is to produce less, but more, by focusing on genres and licenses appreciated by the general public.
Some nice successes, and bitter failures
The year 2022 of SVOD was not only crossed by dark clouds. The platforms have met with great success, with some real hits that have marked the period.
Netflix to start was able to count on season 4 of Stranger Things Where Dahmer to create the event with audience scores that would make traditional TV channels green with envy. Disney+ was once again able to count on Marvel Studios and Star Wars, with Obi-Wan Kenobito recruit ever more fans of these universes.
Also hard to forget The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Powerand its visual quality which has nothing to envy to that of a cinematic mega-production and which brought SVOD into the big leagues from an industrial and manufacturing point of view, or the spin-off of Game Of Thrones, House of the Dragonwhich made the heyday of HBO Max at the start of the school year.
In December 2022, French viewers were also able to discover Paramount+, the offer from the eponymous studio, bringing ever more series and films from its catalogs.
2023 does not look very promising, however. Lionsgate+ will close in the first months of the year. Salto could also go out of business, except to find a buyer. OCS will lose the rights to the HBO catalog before the end of this year and could be bought out by Canal+. Finally, in the United States, HBO Max could disappear in favor of a new platform, Max, and several series have already left the service, including the very famous Westworld.
The golden age of streaming is now behind us. With fierce competition and declining household purchasing power, the platforms have suddenly returned to Earth and must face the age of reason. And there won’t be room for everyone.
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