New competitors like HBO Max and NBCU’s Peacock are already eating up Netflix’s lead in streaming wars
Here is a snapshot of the top streaming services in the U.S. and how their market share compares to the same period last year:
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Some points worth mentioning:
• Netflix’s market share in the United States was reached last year – while adding a company record of 36.58 million new accounts globally in 2020. Netflix’s market share in the United States has been reduced by 29% to 20% since the beginning of 2020; it is a 31% drop last year.
• In January, Netflix reported that it had 73.94 million subscribers in the United States and Canada (Netflix always reports the two markets together); about 7 million of these subscribers come from the north of the border, which means that Netflix has about 67 million active subscriptions in the United States alone.
• Netflix’s share of the overall streaming pie in the United States has declined as new services like HBO Max and NBCUniversal’s Peacock emerged in 2020.
• The same can be said for Amazon Prime Video. A year ago, Amazon Prime Video held 21% of the U.S. streaming market, but now it has dropped to 16% – a drop of almost 24%.
• Amazon Prime Video is a little more complicated for streaming analysts to design. On the one hand, anyone who pays for an Amazon Prime subscription gets access to Video Prime, but that does not necessarily mean that every Prime subscriber is watching “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” or “Jack Ryan”. (Some may sign up for free shipping.) Amazon hasn’t given an update on the total of its Prime memberships since early 2020, when it announced that it had exceeded 150 million paying customers; Ampere data indicates that almost 54 million Prime members use their Prime Video app in the U.S.
• Disney-owned Hulu takes the bronze medal here, but that includes its Hulu streaming service and its live TV streaming service.
• This may be the most surprising aspect of Ampere’s data: Disney + is in fifth place in the streaming field in the United States and even lags behind HBO, despite the uneven launch of HBO Max last year. While Disney + registered 94 million subscribers by the end of 2020, the service has a strong presence outside the United States and, as The Information recently reported, less than 40 million of its subscribers are Americans.
• HBO’s numbers are impressive. In January, parent company AT&T boasted that HBO Max surpassed 41 million American subscribers, surpassing Disney + domestically – but that count includes a few tricks: about 17.2 million of these subscribers are “activated”, as said AT&T, which means they downloaded the HBO Max app. (Remember that HBO already had existing streaming customers on its HBO Go and HBO Now services before HBO Max.)
• The biggest winners, in terms of market share, were Peacock, which went from 0% of the market to 5% of the market at the end of 2020, and HBO, which won only 3% of the streaming pie at the same time last year; that slice quadrupled in size as HBO sought to boost its core service, HBO Max, to the upper echelon of streaming services. Most notably, in an effort to gain new subscribers, Warner Bros. decided to release all 17 of its 2021 films – including “Godzilla vs. Kong ”and“ Matrix 4 ”by Keanu Reeves – on HBO Max at the same time that they reached cinemas this year.
From another angle, this is how the current streaming hierarchy changes in the US, a few weeks before Netflix and other streamers are set up to report their first quarter subscriber gains (or losses):
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The battle for third place in the U.S. streaming hierarchy appears to be the main battleground in 2021. Ampere’s research manager, Toby Holleran, said he expects HBO Max to “have a good success this year” and gave credit to Warner Bros. ‘plan to launch all of their theatrical releases on the service in the same way as they reach theaters. However, he predicted, this one-year-old gambit “will not reach Hulu”.
In addition, Holleran said he expects “Disney + to surpass HBO Max and Hulu” in the first half of 2021 and “end the year as the third largest streaming service in the U.S., with Hulu in fourth place, and HBO Max taking fifth. “
Other streaming competitors – including Apple TV +, Peacock from NBCUniversal and Paramount + from ViacomCBS (listed here by its pre-reformulated name, CBS All Access) – are far behind the leaders in the category.
“Bridgerton” (Netflix)
Ampere data is released at a time when the average American household is spending $ 40 a month on streaming services, as TheWrap reported earlier this year. This represents a 17% increase from the $ 34 that Americans spent per month in early 2020, and a 33% increase from the first quarter of 2019, when Americans spent an average of $ 30 per month. This is also expected to increase in 2021, as services like Disney + raise their monthly fees.
Holleran added that Netflix’s place at the top of the streaming hierarchy is “apparently cemented”, even as its slice of the American pie has shrunk in the past year, at least in the near future. But despite its pioneer advantage and variety of big-name original shows, from “Stranger Things” to “Bridgerton”, Netflix’s number one status is not guaranteed forever. To begin with, Holleran noted that Disney’s overall streaming business, including Hulu and ESPN +, overtook Netflix’s subscriber base in the United States more than a year ago, “and is on track to surpass it globally by 2024.”
In other words: don’t be shocked if Disney + continues to narrow the gap with Netflix, both in the United States and abroad.