Netflix Is The Winner Of The Streaming Wars, According To A New Report

Two years ago, Netflix appeared to be in something approaching trouble. The streaming service's global subscriber numbers dipped for the first time in over a decade, while competitors like Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and HBO Max (which rebranded to Max in 2023) all saw an uptick in their subscription numbers. Though Netflix was still the leader in the streaming clubhouse by a significant margin (not counting YouTube), their profits took a hit as they continued to lose the rights to rerun favorites like "Friends," "Cheers" and "The Office." Would these rivals keep eating into Netflix's lead in the coming years as they ramped up production in original content and swiped the rights to other film and television hits from the streaming king?

According to the Netflix's newly released quarterly report, the company is thriving once again. The streamer far outpaced industry forecasts by netting eight million new subscribers in the last quarter (Wall Street analysts had predicted a shade under five million new sign-ups) on its way to recording a 44% uptick in quarterly profit from 2023. Per Bloomberg, industry observers are starting to believe Netflix has built an "insurmountable" lead in overall subscribers. Meanwhile, Disney, Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount are reducing spending to stanch the flow of red ink from streaming losses.

This bolsters the claim made by some entertainment journalists over the last year that Netflix has outright won the streaming wars. This declaration felt a tad premature in 2023, but at the midpoint of 2024 it's hard to see how these competitors — particularly Warner Bros. Discovery, which, under the inept leadership of David Zaslav, has seen a 70% plunge in stock market price since the 2022 merger — will ever come close to throwing the smallest of scares into Netflix.

So how did Netflix right the ship?

Netflix's secret weapon has basically been to just keep being Netflix. For starters, they were the first major player in the streaming space, and that will never change. As for explaining their subscriber surge, they've licensed old titles from their rivals libraries and turned them into streaming smashes (most notably "Suits," which went from a reliably solid performer on Peacock to a global sensation on Netflix), expanded their reach to international markets and introduced a password sharing plan. Though they've continued to create plenty of original movies and series (i.e. "content"), their ability to overspend placed them in an advantageous position over Disney+ and Max, both of which have posted losses while shelling out big money to high-priced talent on wildly expensive entertainments.

Amazon and Apple are in different positions given their huge corporate war chests (in that they can afford to throw money away, for now), but Netflix's continued lead on the former is doubly impressive when you consider that a Prime Video subscription is factored into one's overall Amazon Prime membership. It's unclear how either could spend their way into overtaking Netflix's subscription dominance. Outside of something drastic like the platform itself suddenly becoming unstable in terms of streaming quality, this is likely to be the state of play for the foreseeable future.

The streaming wars will never end, but the battles being fought now are for second place. Netflix appears all but invincible.