Fewer Streaming Services Are Reporting Specific Subscriber Numbers; Is This the New Industry Normal?
One of the most consistent metrics of success for streaming services in the relatively short history of the industry has been subscriber totals. Quarterly earnings reports were scoured for the section regarding new customer additions, and Wall Street heaped both praise and dollars on the services that piled up the most users.
However, the industry has undergone some major changes in the last six months. Companies need a viable plan to make their streaming services profitable if they expect to gain investors’ favor now, and that means most in the streaming marketplace have some major work to do. As of now, Netflix is the only streaming service to report itself as profitable.
As a reflection of those changes, some companies are no longer even bothering to report their active user numbers. FOX is the latest example, having declined to provide subscriber numbers to its free ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) service Tubi since May of 2022.
FOX joins Prime Video and Apple TV+, neither of which has ever reported individual subscriber numbers. Warner Bros. Discovery may be headed in that direction, as it stopped reporting subscriber totals for its two streaming services discovery+ and HBO Max separately when WarnerMedia was acquired by Discovery in 2022. The company still reports subscriber numbers for the two services, but as one lump sum.
It would hardly be surprising to see more companies jump on this train. The subscriber number statistic is no longer the main determining factor on whether a streaming service’s stock will rise or fall, and it has become less and less important to media companies because the focus has shifted to how much money they can make from their subscribers, not how many of them they have.
Obviously, subscriber counts still matter to media executives. Streaming services need paying customers to continue in business, and the more they have, the more subscription dollars they make. But, while still working to add customers, companies are increasingly shifting to focus on how they can generate increased revenue per customer they already have, especially since 93% of streaming users are considering churning away from a service in the next year.
Most companies have turned to similar methods to boost the average revenue per user (ARPU) they see, such as launching ad-supported tiers, licensing content to third parties or simply increasing subscription prices. Which service will have the most success remains to be seen, but they’re all working toward the same goal.
Another reason more media companies might stop reporting individual subscriber numbers: nobody cares. As stated, investors are more focused on profitability than simple viability these days, and the average user on the street has no use for the knowledge that Disney+ is the second-largest streamer in terms of subscriber numbers behind Netflix. Users knowing how many fellow users they have isn’t likely to be a deciding factor when they’re thinking about leaving a streaming service, and why would companies report a statistic that no one is listening to?
Tubi is the most recent domino to fall, but more streaming services could follow down this path in the next year. Streaming stock prices will continue to rise and fall, but gaudy user numbers will have less and less impact on them, and more services could stop reporting their numbers altogether as a result.
Tubi
Tubi is a free video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 200,000+ movies and TV episodes - more than any other streaming service. Its ad breaks are shorter and less frequent than most free services. Fox executives have called their service “TV on steroids.”