LOS ANGELES (CNA) – When Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings declared in 2016 “we love people sharing” accounts, the company had a commanding lead in the streaming business and four years of blistering growth ahead of it. No one had yet heard of Disney Plus or the streaming wars.
But after the platform lost subscribers early last year, Hastings called time on this breezy attitude towards password sharing, which has given rise to an estimated 100 million Netflix freeloaders around the world.
In recent days, the company has launched password crackdowns in the United States (US), United Kingdom and more than 100 other countries.
In the US, it has told customers that if they want to share their password, they must pay USD7.99 a month to add a person outside their home, or USD6.99 if they are prepared to have an account with adverts. The crackdown plus the new push into advertising reflect the tough realities of the streaming business model that Netflix pioneered. In the boom times, investors were willing to overlook eight- or nine-figure quarterly losses as long as subscription growth was strong. Now, however, new sign-ups have slowed and competition is intense. In the US, the average household has 5.5 streaming subscriptions, global strategic director at research group Kantar Jennifer Chan said.
“Overall household streaming penetration hasn’t changed very much since the end of COVID-19,” Chan said.
“So the focus for streamers now is on retaining their current customer base and becoming the priority subscription so that consumers aren’t cancelling – and if they are, how do you win them back”.
Investors meanwhile want to see a path to profitability, putting serious pressure on most of the major streaming services to slash costs and come up with new strategies to generate cash.
Netflix is profitable, but Disney Plus, Paramount Plus and NBCUniversal’s Peacock are still racking up hefty losses. Warner Bros Discovery, which aggressively cut costs after the companies were combined in a USD40 billion merger last year, recently told investors it expected to turn a profit in its streaming business a full year ahead of schedule and that this part of the business made USD50 million in profit in the most recent quarter.
Like Netflix, Warner has been making big changes to its streaming service. On Tuesday it combined its HBO Max service – home of Succession, White Lotus and Game of Thrones – with Discovery Plus, which specialises in low-cost unscripted programming such as 90-Day Fiancé. The combined service was renamed Max, and the company hopes the broader offering will increase customer numbers and engagement.
