New competitors like HBO Max and NBCU’s Peacock are already eating up Netflix’s lead in the power wars
Here’s a snapshot of the best streaming services in the US and how their market share is increasing compared to the same time last year:
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Some points that are worth mentioning:
• Netflix’s U.S. market share has been hit hard in the past year – even though it added 36.58 million new accounts worldwide by 2020. Netflix’s U.S. market share has been cut from 29% to 20% since the beginning of 2020; this is a decrease of 31% in the past year.
• In January, Netflix reported that it had 73.94 million subscribers in both the US and Canada (Netflix always reports the two markets together); an estimated 7 million subscribers come from the north border, meaning Netflix has only 67 million active subscriptions in the US.
• Netflix’s share of the overall streaming pie in the US has shrunk as new services such as HBO Max and NBCUniversal’s Peacock emerge in 2020.
• The same can be said for Amazon Prime Video. A year ago, Amazon Prime Video claimed 21% of the US streaming market, but it is now down to 16% – a drop of almost 24%.
• Amazon Prime Video is a little trickier for analysts who want to do this. To begin with, anyone who pays for an Amazon Prime subscription gets access to Prime Video, but that does not necessarily mean that every Prime subscriber watches “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” or “Jack Ryan”. (Some may sign up for free delivery of goods.) Amazon has not given an update on its total Prime membership since its inception in 2020, when it announced it had passed 150 million paying customers; Ampere data indicates that nearly 54 million Prime members use their Prime Video app in the US
• Disney-owned Hulu takes the bronze medal here, but it includes both its Hulu streaming service and its live TV streaming service.
• This is perhaps the most surprising aspect of Ampere’s data: Disney + sits in fifth place in the US stream and even now lags behind HBO, despite the uneven rollout of HBO Max last year. While Disney + reported 94 million subscribers by the end of 2020, the service is strongly present outside the US, and as The Information recently reported, less than 40 million of its subscribers are American.
• HBO’s numbers are impressive. In January, parent company AT&T boasted that HBO Max had surpassed 41 million US subscribers at the top of Disney + – but it contained some harassment: About 17.2 million of the subscribers are ‘activated’, as AT&T puts it, which means that they downloaded the HBO Max app. (Remember, before HBO Max, HBO already had existing streaming customers in both HBO Go and HBO Now services.)
• In terms of market share, the biggest gains were Peacock, which rose from 0% of the market to 5% of the market by the end of 2020, and HBO, which claimed only 3% of the streaming pie at the same time last year. ; The cut is now quadrupled in size as HBO looked to drive its line pin service, HBO Max, into the highest level of streaming services. In an effort to win new subscribers, Warner Bros. especially decided to release all 17 of his 2021 films – including “Godzilla vs. Kong” and “Matrix 4” by Keanu Reeves – on HBO Max, at the same time as they hit. theaters this year.
Here’s how the current streaming hierarchy in the US is shaking up, just weeks before Netflix and other streamers have to report their Q1 subscriber gains (or losses):
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The battle for third place in the American flow hierarchy looks set to be the most important battlefield in 2021. Ampere research manager Toby Holleran said he expected HBO Max to ‘achieve a fair amount of success this year’ and told Warner Bros. ‘plans to release all its theatrical releases on the service the same as they appear in theaters. However, he predicted that the one-year gambit “would not completely catch up with Hulu.”
In addition, Holleran said he expects “Disney + to surpass both HBO Max and Hulu” by the first half of 2021, and “will end the year as the third largest streaming service in the US, with Hulu in fourth place and HBO Max take fifth. ”
Other streaming competitors – including Apple TV +, NBCUniversal’s Peacock and ViacomCBS’s Paramount + (listed here by its first name CBS All Access) – lag far behind the leaders in the category.
“Bridgerton” (Netflix)
Ampere’s data comes as the average U.S. household now spends $ 40 a month on streaming services, as TheWrap reported earlier this year. This is 17% higher than the $ 34 Americans who spend each month in early 2020, and 33% compared to the first quarter of 2019, when Americans spent an average of $ 30 per month. It is also likely to rise higher in 2021 as services like Disney + increase their monthly fees.
Holleran added that Netflix’s place at the top of the streaming hierarchy is ‘seemingly grounded’, even though part of the US pie has shrunk over the past year, at least for the foreseeable future. But despite the first benefit and a series of original shows, from ‘Stranger Things’ to ‘Bridgerton’, Netflix’s no. 1 status not guaranteed forever. First, Holleran noted that Disney’s overall streaming business, which includes both Hulu and ESPN +, surpassed Netflix’s US subscriber base more than a year ago, “and that it’s on track to catch up worldwide by 2024. . “
In other words: Do not be shocked if Disney + continues to reduce the gap with Netflix, both in the United States and abroad.