Netflix ended 2021 with 221 million global subscribers. See how the rest stack up in the so-called streaming wars, from Disney to Peacock.
Taking liberty with some Fall Out Boy lyrics: Streaming ain’t a scene, it’s a goddamn arms race. The main revenue stream for SVOD services comes from paid subscribers like you and me, so the market closely monitors the growth level (or God forbid, the lack there of) for each of the major players. So do we.
Last week, IndieWire compiled the content spends for each of the major streaming services. The week, we rank their respective subscriber totals, small to big, as of the end of calendar 2021. Yeah, we’re kind of like a one-stop shop for DTC data points this month.
Several giants have subscriber figures in or around the triple digits: Netflix, Disney, and the soon-to-be combined Discovery+ and HBO Max (including linear HBO). The others are Peacock. Sorry, NBCUniversal, but your number is just not very good — and none of us want to see another Seeso incident.
Peacock
NBCUniversal’s Peacock, also home to the WWE Network, had more than 9 million paid subscribers at the end of 2021. Most of those stem from the service’s cheaper, $4.99 per month, ad-supported option as opposed to the $9.99 ad-free option, Comcast chairman Brian L. Roberts recently said.
“Within these 24.5 MAAs [monthly active accounts] are over 9 million paid subscribers approaching $10 in paid ARPU [average revenue per unit], which includes the advertising. And that is without much focus on paid subscriber growth,” Roberts said during a conference call tied to Comcast’s Q4 earnings. “We have another 7 million highly engaged bundle subscribers from Xfinity and other top distributors who use Peacock every single month and currently receive Peacock Premium at no extra cost.”
Peacock, which launched in April 2020, is clearly playing catch-up. Unfortunately, like actual peacocks, this one hasn’t quite taken off.
Apple…