Coming soon Raising the curtain on Netflix’s ambitious third act
A S LOCKDOWNS LOOMED last year, people scrambled to stock up on home-survival essentials: food, medicine and a Netflix subscription. In the first half of 2020 the streaming giant registered 25m new members globally, twice as many as had signed up in the same period a year earlier. With viewers hunkering down to see out the pandemic on the sofa, “Outbreak”, a disaster movie from 1995, made Netflix’s top ten.
Now, as the world’s economies reopen, Netflix is sputtering. On July 20th it announced 1.5m new sign-ups between April and June, 85% fewer than a year ago. In America and Canada, where the market is saturated and competitors are multiplying, the total number of subscribers declined by 430,000. Netflix’s share price, which soared by nearly 50% in the first half of 2020, has barely risen in the past year (and dropped by 3% on July 21st).
The stall is unsurprising. Many new members from 2020 pulled forward subscriptions they would have bought this year. It still raises a difficult long-term question for Netflix. The company began by renting DVDs by mail. Its second, stunning act was to invent and dominate subscription video-streaming. Now, as rich markets mature and rivals snap at its heels, growth must come from elsewhere. Netflix’s third season promises exotic new locations and, perhaps, a big plot twist.
