Executive Briefing

Netflix as the global culture platform, Starbucks the currency

How big can Netflix realistically get?

Dan Frommer By Dan Frommer on Wednesday, April 17, 2019 at 11:30 am

Netflix reported its first-quarter results yesterday (pdf), and they were pretty good. The streaming service grew by a record 9.6 million paid subscribers — better than expected — and now has almost 150 million paid subs, representing roughly 25% year-over-year growth.

What’s interesting is that the company has been increasingly — though still selectively — releasing viewership data for some of its original shows and movies, after years of being mostly opaque about how many people watched anything on the service. It continues to show that Netflix can do both niche and mass. For example:

  • Triple Frontier, a movie starring Ben Affleck, has been watched by more than 52 million member households — the term Netflix uses to recognize that it can’t count specific people, but can count accounts and devices — in its first four weeks on the service.
  • The Umbrella Academy, a comic book-adapted show, has been watched by 45 million member households in its first four weeks.
  • Our Planet, the nature documentary narrated by David Attenborough, is on pace for more than 25 million member households in its first month.
  • Netflix’s Fyre Fest documentary (which was simultaneously competing with / drafting off another from Hulu) was watched by more than 20 million member households in its first month.

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Dan Frommer

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