By Rebecca Shields
Your commercial awareness dose
Streaming services have become a key part of daily life, they provide endless escapism for many, a crucial part of coping through the lockdowns and tier restrictions. The UK has just entered its third national lockdown and the reliance on streaming platforms has never been so prevalent. Over the next month, UK Netflix subscribers are set to receive notice of a price increase to their monthly subscriptions. This would appear to be in part due to having an audience eager for content and the rapid growth of new competitors- who are Netflix’s big competitors?
Amazon Prime Video currently boasts the streaming service most like traditional TV packages (such as Sky), with its own streaming service including entertainment programmes and sports matches. It also has more than 70 other channels that can be added for additional subscriptions. Amazon confirmed a deal with Sky in March last year which saw Prime Video appear on Sky’s service Sky Q and Now TV in December 2020. The deal also includes Now TV being added to Amazon’s Fire TV. Currently, this agreement is contracted for one year. Amazon also owns another streaming service, Twitch. The streaming platform saw an increase in viewership of 31% last year.
However, there is another competitor making a name for themselves, Disney+. The streaming platform has more than 86 million subscribers, which for perspective is 4 million away from their 2024 total subscriber goal. This same feat that took Disney+ only one year, took Netflix many more years to accomplish. Not only is Disney+’s subscriber count growing rapidly, so is their content having just announced a new part of their streaming service for mature content aimed at adults, launching at the end of February this year.
Like Netflix, Disney+ is set to increase its prices with the addition of its adult-focused service. Whilst there is no confirmation around how much the price increase will be for Disney+, the confirmed prices for Netflix gives some indication. Netflix’s new prices are set to increase by £1 to £9.99 per month for the standard package, for the premium package there will be an increase of £2, making a total of £13.99. The base package will remain the same at £5.99 per month. Similar increases are expected in the US also.
For streaming services now is the perfect time for a price increase. The streaming giant Netflix saw their share price spike to $525 per share in 2020. Last year Netflix’s subscriber total grew by 26 million new users, in the first half of the year alone. However, this did decrease with the increase of new competitors in quarter 3 when only 2.2million new subscribers signed up.
Despite this, streaming platforms were so popular last year that in the early half of 2020 there were reports of countries capping data allowances for streaming services. The EU requested all streaming platforms reduce their streaming quality so as not to affect low bandwidth areas. All the major streaming platforms agreed to this measure.
Will the price increase affect Netflix negatively? Most likely not. This seems an inevitable move for streaming platforms and one that has been met with little backlash. You only have to search online for Netflix to see that all articles related to it are about new shows that are set to appear. The more interesting development will be seeing how Netflix adapts to Disney+’s inevitable takeover of the streaming world and whether Netflix will be able to hold onto their title of the world’s most popular streaming platform. With Netflix currently holding around 200 million subscribers and Disney+ expected to reach 230 million subscribers by 2024 it could be a very tight battle for the title.
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