(San Francisco) Netflix kicks off 2024 in style after gaining more than 13 million additional subscribers during the holiday season, more than 260 million subscribers in total, and an ambitious investment in live sports .
The platform “establishes itself as the undisputed leader in the streaming wars,” Ross Benes, Insider Intelligence analyst, reacted Tuesday after the publication of the company’s quarterly results.
“Netflix exceeded expectations by adding 13 million subscribers worldwide, including nearly 3 million in the North American market, where audiences are most saturated,” he added.
The Californian group, which had already gained nearly 9 million subscribers during the summer, owes this spectacular growth to its stricter policy in terms of sharing passwords between users and to its cheaper subscription with advertising .
“We are at 23 million active monthly users” of this formula, said Greg Peters, co-general director, during a conference call. In November, Netflix announced 15 million.
“Subscriber growth from the new regulation will eventually fade,” noted Ross Benes.
But, according to him, the streaming pioneer “plans to support the demand of its audience by pursuing its ambitions in live programming”.
“Obtaining the broadcast rights to WWE Raw shows that Netflix takes this subject seriously,” underlined the expert.
The company announced Tuesday morning that it had signed a ten-year broadcasting agreement with the American professional wrestling league WWE, for $5 billion.
New advertising activity
From 2025 in the United States, it thus wins the exclusivity of RawWWE’s flagship show which was among the best audiences on American cable last year.
“This is the heart of our vision for sports, centered on drama,” said Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix. “This represents 52 weeks of live programming each year and is part of our ambitions for more live programming.”
Wrestling should also contribute to the group’s new advertising business, and “this will provide additional justification for increasing subscription prices in the future,” said Ross Benes.
Wall Street welcomed this good news: Netflix gained more than 8% during electronic trading after the close of the New York Stock Exchange.
The streaming pioneer achieved $8.8 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter (+12.5% year-on-year), including net profit of $938 million, slightly below expectations. analysts, but well above the 55 million for the same period the previous year.
And he has big ambitions for the current quarter, betting on growth of 13%, or more than 9 billion dollars in revenue, and almost 2 billion in net profit.
“It seems hard to believe, but there are hundreds of millions of households who could subscribe to Netflix and haven’t yet,” Greg Peters joked. “We must conquer them.”
Squid Games come back
At the end of the year, the final seasons of series like Sex Education Or The Crown attracted crowds, as did Berlina series in the universe of the successful series The House of Paper or Squid Game: The Challengea reality TV show inspired by the South Korean phenomenon series Squid Game.
It returns to the platform in 2024 with a new season, alongside Bridgerton And Emily in Paris.
“Despite the strikes last year which postponed the launch of certain titles, we have a substantial and bold program for 2024,” assured the online video service.
The production of films and series was paralyzed for six months in the United States by a historic strike by screenwriters and actors, which ended in November.
The main streaming platforms, however, assured that the impact of this double social movement would be limited for them, especially since it incidentally allowed them to save money.
Netflix’s operating margin came in at 20.6% for its full 2023 fiscal year, higher than its forecasts, while Disney+ is still figuring out how to achieve profitability.
Enough to allow the Los Gatos group to expand further into other entertainment areas already well occupied by its competitors, such as sport.
The streaming veteran had until now remained relatively behind in the race for sports event broadcasting rights.